


three wise monkeys

by meditationonbaaal



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Attempted Sexual Assault, Catholic School, Cults, F/M, G&G, Magical Realism, Smut, repost, set in the late 80s
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:27:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 79,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27714077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meditationonbaaal/pseuds/meditationonbaaal
Summary: She gives him a questioning look. “I thought it was a work of fiction.”“Doesn’t all fiction have some basis in real life experience?”A mental hiccup kicks its way through his brain as he remembers he never once hinted to anyone – the editors, the interviewers, even his father - that there was a hint of truth to the story, and yet the confession settles there, idling between the words. She smiles like she has caught him in an admission of guilt, and he thinks offhand if the scales of fate were controlled by a girl like her, he would willingly offer up his pound of flesh for her judgment. “To some extent,” he adds like a last ditch effort to mislead her.He feels like something has been taken from him, and he gave it up too freely. She turns her green eyes back to the first page, rereads the first sentence, and he watches her gaze sharpen with interest, not so polite, something with more intention.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 19
Kudos: 31





	1. see no evil

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: It is suggested that two characters intend to sexually assault another character in this chapter. Please, if this upsets you, do not read or skip over it.
> 
> _Iunderstandall... Iseeno..._  
>  _destructiveurges... Iseeno..._  
>  _itseemssoperfect... Iseenoo..._  
>  _I see... I see no... I see no evil_
> 
> See No Evil by Television

“You have never boarded before, Mr. Jones?”

Jughead doesn’t like responding to questions when the answer is readily accessible information. The manila folder is open on the ink blotter, and the guidance counselor presses his palm along the fold to lay it flat. Jughead can just make out the school picture taped to his profile, taken for his ID card this morning. The picture is recent, but the information on the page is old news.

He shakes his head, cannot muster the effort for a verbal response. His mother would pop him in the mouth. _You speak when spoken to, Forsythe_. Not that he was often awarded the opportunity to speak in his mother’s presence, but when she asked him a question, he better damn well answer. The man across from him has not earned that respect, and maybe his mother would understand that. _You’re a Jones. You don’t answer to sheep_.

The man looks at him, and somehow it is suddenly both a cakewalk and a challenge to think of him as just another one of the herd. He closes Jughead’s school record and leans back in his chair, and for a moment, Jughead wonders if the man can read thoughts with the way he regards him, something calculating but docile about his stare. The guidance counselor’s chair creaks as he crosses his legs. Jug breaks eye contact to read his name plate and remind himself who is on the other side of the desk. 

Vexing, that is how he would describe the man’s gaze, vexing and vexed, as if everyone he looks at is a puzzle to be pieced apart and put back together, and yet something tells Jughead the guidance counselor doesn’t put them back together the way he found them.

“You know, I was expecting a priest.” He tries to inject some lightness into the uncomfortable silence. “Mr. Evernever.” Priests do not look like him, though. Abstinence does not come to mind with a jawline like that. 

“You seem like an intuitive young man, Forsythe.”

“Jughead.”

“What?”

“Jughead, please.” Only his mother calls him Forsythe, and it always feels like the slick, sick slide of a sharp knife through his back, like how it feels to be stabbed in a nightmare.

Mr. Evernever smiles and tries the nickname out. The hyphen is audible, and Jug tells him, “It’s all one word.”

Evernever smiles again, wider this time, like he is in on a joke and Jughead is the punchline. “Okay, Jughead, here’s some friendly advice. Here at Canterbury there are only a handful of scholarship students like yourself. Most of the students come from old money, big family names, the like, and they have the mentality to match, so I don’t feel the need to sugarcoat this for you – be careful, be aware, and know that there is a very good chance if you end up in a fight, no matter who started it, you will be on the losing end in the headmaster’s office.”

Jug scratches underneath the wool beanie his mother knitted him eight years ago for Christmas, a time when he was borderline fanatical about knights and dragons. He was a guileless kid with naïve concepts of honor and heroism, all innocent chivalry, and his mother telling him he would be a king in his own right eventually, crocheting the points of a crown into the hat. During his coronation, she reminded him that kings create their own morality. _Might makes right, Forsythe_.

“Do I look like I get in a lot of fights?”

“You have a smart mouth,” Mr. Evernever states bluntly. “Which I can handle, but the students, some of the faculty, they won’t like to hear it coming from a scholarship student.”  
  
“You mean a charity case,” Jug supplies. “I’ve got a lot of experience with bullies, Mr. Evernever.” He came out of one.

“Just know, Jughead, that my door is always open if you need someone to talk to. Adjusting to life at a boarding school, it can be hard for some students. A good number do not make it through the first semester, and you’re transferring during your junior year. Most of the students here have known each other since kindergarten.

“I know this scholarship is important to you, to your future. Many students at Canterbury go on to Ivy League schools, and based on your profile, I imagine that might be one of your goals.

“We want you to do well here.” Jughead nearly glances around for this wonderful, supportive _we_. “ _I_ want to set you up for success.” A royal _we_ then.

“Please, don’t hesitate to call on me. I’ll give you my number if you need to contact me outside of regular school hours,” Mr. Evernever explains, and reaches into a card holder for his contact information. “I’m more than just a guidance counselor, Jughead. If you let me, I would like to be your friend.” He slides the card across the ink blotter, waits with his index finger perched on top until Jughead takes it.

Jughead manipulates the card in his hands, knows he will crumple it up and toss it in the first waste-bin he spots after he leaves. Mr. Evernever looks at him like he knows he will, too, but he has to go through the motions.

Jug leaps right over his obligatory awkward _thank you_. “How do I get my schedule and room?”

“Right here, Mr. Jones.” Mr. Evernever hands him a large envelope from his inbox pile. “That has your class schedule, your boarding and dining information, and some extra brochures about school activities, extracurriculars, athletics. Do you play any sports?”

Jughead grabs the envelope, but Evernever keeps a hold on it. “Only if forced,” Jug jokes, tugging on the envelope, and Mr. Evernever laughs, lets go. Jug makes a show of putting Evernever’s contact card in the envelope, hoping it might expedite the end of this meeting.

He moves to stand up, but Evernever has a bit more he needs to offload, waving at Jughead to remain seated. “We hold mass for the students and the general public on Sundays. It isn’t mandatory, but students are encouraged to attend,” Mr. Evernever explains, and Jughead infers _required_ in place of _encouraged_. “It is a good opportunity to network, be a part of this community. Mandatory mass is held on Tuesdays before lunch for the students. When we still had the grade school attached, older students were assigned younger prayer partners, but now students are encouraged to find prayer partners within the upper school, usually freshman paired with seniors, but that is more of a guideline. Are you a practicing Catholic, Mr. Jones?”

“My dad was raised Catholic,” he discloses, but his father hasn’t shown his face at a church in over a decade, and his mother was raised something else.

Evernever clasps his hands on the desktop and leans towards Jughead, imparting conspiratorially, “To be honest, neither am I, but this school was built on the foundation of the Catholic church and still maintains very close ties with the local diocese. Many of the families that fund this school are longstanding members with the Church. I strongly encourage you to participate if you want to do well.”

“We all have to play the game, right?” Jughead surmises, sighing, and the corners of Evernever’s lips quirk up again, like there is another inside joke hiding behind that unsettling smile.

* * *

The redhead’s hand slams into his, and Jughead feels bowled over by the aligned snap of their palms against one another’s until the redhead tightens his grip, completes the energetic greeting with a thousand-watt smile and friendly brown eyes that remind Jughead of his childhood pup Hot Dog. “Hey, man, I’m Archie Andrews. Nice to meet you, finally. How was the trip?”

Archie releases Jug’s hand and strides back to his side of the room, rummaging around in an open drawer for a clean shirt. Jughead looks down at his hand, damp now with the leftovers of Archie’s shower and somehow vibrating with remnant energy, like it’s contagious. There is something so easy and open about Archie’s demeanor that Jughead has to ignore his hard-wired instinct to suspect the worst. 

“You’re from Ohio?” Archie asks without turning around, pulling on a blue polo shirt, Canterbury blue with the school’s insignia on the chest pocket. He seems to realize it is a school shirt and yanks it back over his head, searching the drawer for a replacement.

“Yeah, originally,” Jughead answers, wiping his palm on his jeans. “But, I moved here from in state.”

“What does your family do?” Archie finds a secular shirt, same blue, no logo.

That question throws him for a loop. In all his past interactions with strangers, it has never been a beginner get-to-know-you question, and coming from Archie, it sounds like his generic go-to. And, worse, he doesn’t know how to answer it tactfully. He tries to think up some good euphemisms, wishing he had more time, hears the _Jeopardy_ theme song playing in his head as he comes up with dead air. “Um, you know, we dabble in a few things, real estate, public safety, local politics. What about yours?” If Archie asks him to spell it out, he can finesse the explanation. The Jones do own real estate in Ohio and New York, that’s true. 

Archie seems to take that answer at face-value and nods. “Andrews Construction,” he returns, combing his wet hair in the mirror above his dresser.

He recognizes that name up and down the east coast on a number of signs promising new high-rises and strip malls. “Cool,” Jug responds, nodding, sitting on the edge of his bed in their double dorm room.

“I heard you’re here on scholarship,” Archie says offhand, and Jughead wonders if there is a question somewhere in that statement. Jughead offers only a noncommittal _yeah_. “So, are you like some super genius? They think you’re gonna cure cancer?” He finishes the final sweep of his Johnny Carson in the mirror and turns around, giving Jughead a onceover. “Or sports? I’m guessing track?”

“I wrote a short story.”

Arch shoots him a skeptical look. “That’s how you got your scholarship?”

“For the _New Yorker_ ,” Jughead elaborates, and Archie still doesn’t look too convinced. Maybe convinced isn’t the right word. Confused but without animus. He is still waiting for Archie to show his second face, but something tells him the kid doesn’t have one. The redhead takes and offers things at face-value. If true, that would be refreshing for Jughead. He can count the number of genuine people he knows on one hand. “It’s a major publication.”

“And they offered you a full-ride?” Jughead shrugs, and Archie’s eyebrows raise in appreciation. “Must’ve been one hell of a story. You have a copy?” Jug nods. He has it in his bag, a copy of the New Yorker print his editor sent him when it was first published. _Here’s looking at you, kid_ , written on the front of so much promise.

“Can I read it some time?”

Jughead mumbles _sure_ and Archie grins. “So what they paired me up with the next Fitzgerald or something?”

“I hope not,” Jughead says, laughing. “I’d like to think I’m not an insecure drunk sexist who essentially capitalized on his wife’s creativity, but you know, there’s still time. I’m young.”

Archie chuckles. “You’re strange.” He pauses as if trying to remember something. “I’m sorry, man, you probably told me your name, and I forgot.”

Jughead laughs again. “No, I never said it. It’s Jughead.” Archie quirks an eyebrow. “Seriously. It’s a nickname, but I go by Jughead. Don’t ask.”

“I won’t say I’m not curious.” Archie tests the name out on his own, seems to accept it and nods like every other day he meets a kid named Jughead. “So, Jughead, you busy tonight?”

“Yeah, Arch, sorry, my dance card is plum full. Everybody wants a turn with the new kid.” His mother used to say sarcasm was the weakest form of humor. Archie snorts, though, and asks him if he is up for a party. “Party?”

“It’s Cheryl Blossom’s end-of-the-summer party,” Archie supplies.

Jughead picks at the blanket on his bed. It isn’t his. “Is Cheryl Blossom someone important?”

“Well, her dad built half this school, and he owns most of the surrounding property,” Archie explains, walking to the closet for a pair of shoes. “Actually, we didn’t think she was going to throw it this year because of Jason, but she was pretty adamant that the _show must go on_ , or something like that. I don’t know. Veronica told me about it.”

“Who’s Jason? And Veronica?”

It occurs to Archie again that Jughead is the new kid in town. He doesn’t know these people, and he looks a little ashamed, rubbing the back of his neck at his gaffe. Jughead wonders how someone so privileged could be so endearing. “Right, Veronica is my girlfriend. And Jason is – was Cheryl Blossom’s twin brother. He died in May.”

“Wait, _died_ died?”

“Is there another kind?” Archie says sullenly, slipping on a pair of penny loafers with a shoe horn. He doesn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about going into the details, but Jughead prods further, asking how, why, whether it was of natural causes, an accident, suspicious circumstances, and Archie gives him a look like he cannot believe the level of morbid curiosity his new roommate is displaying. _You have no sense of shame_ , his mother whispers, _less a sense of tact,_ and Jughead feels it suddenly, strongly, shame sharp in his gut at Archie’s helpless look.

“No one really likes to talk about it, Jughead, so I suggest you don’t ask too many questions about it to anyone else,” Archie advises, closing the closet door. “He died. He killed himself. That’s it. Now, do you want to go to this party or not?”

Despite the unanswered questions swimming his gut like prowling snakes, Jughead mumbles his apology, pulling his beanie off his head.

“You wear that in summer?” Archie wonders, gesturing at his hat.

Jughead smirks and replaces his crown, tucking some hair underneath. Archie will find out in due time how often Jughead wears this damn hat.

* * *

While filling his Solo with Coke, Jughead watches some kid wearing mission-control glasses worm his way through the crowd and commandeer the stereo system. The kid argues briefly with another kid in a letterman two-times his size, the unofficial gatekeeper of the Hi-Fi, slaps his shoulder with a mixtape and a Jackson. _Huey Lewis_ and the fucking snooze news quickly gives way to the one-hit wonder _Sniff ‘n’ the Tears_ , and Jughead sends a silent kudos to the kid in the birth-control specs.

Archie waves a handle of rum at him, but Jughead covers his cup, mouths _appearances_ , which confuses his new roommate.

He takes a healthy swallow while he scans the crowd of his peers. Every pastel polo with a popped collar is a stark contradiction to the Gothic Revival aesthetic of this modern-day house of Usher, Farrah Fawcett feathered curls against a background of velvet curtains like funeral shrouds, penny loafers and huaraches twisting over oriental rugs probably worth more than Jug’s childhood home. 

Archie taps him on the shoulder, and he swings around, nearly sloshes his cup of Coke on the brunette perched under his roommate’s arm.

“You are so lucky,” she snaps, eyeing the stormy sea in his Solo. “This is Dior.” A flawlessly manicured hand Vanna Whites its way from shoulders to hips as if to prove the point, showcasing the strapless black cocktail dress.

“Black doesn’t stain,” he contends before taking a sip of Coke, calming the waves.

“It’s silk, dick,” she bites as _Fixx_ starts playing over the speakers. “You look dressed to impress, though. Nice hat, very hobo-junkie chic.”

“Ronnie, please,” Archie tries gently, squeezing her waist and jostling her closer. “This is my new roommate, Jughead.”

She raises one skeptical eyebrow, cartoon-perfect above her doe eyes. “Jug-head?” He can hear the hyphen grinding its way between the words. “What kind of name is Jughead? Is that what the beanie is trying to hide? Do you have some weird abnormality under there?”

“It’s better than the real thing,” he offers, a small olive branch.

She purses her lips on the edge of her martini glass and decides to ignore him, turning her body into Archie as her free hand pats his chest affectionately. “Archie-kins, you’re so late.”

Visibly relieved, Archie presses a grateful kiss to the side of his girlfriend’s head and gives Jughead a quick look like _what can you do_. Jughead smiles small, covers it up with a sip of his Coke. Given those involved, the introduction must have gone as well as it could, that failing to hold her attention was probably a good thing. Jughead plays that game well, and he fades into the background easily, dissolving into the crow and leaving Archie and Veronica to their playful bickering in the kitchen.

* * *

He cups his palm around the flame to light his cigarette and remembers that upstate New York is not as much of a flat windy shithole as the outskirts of Toledo. When he looks over the balcony, he sees a line of sugar maples like sentinels silent and still to buffer against the outside world. And maybe that place near Oak Harbor was like that, too, except the buffer was all that unused hay, acres of flatlands left fallow and overrun with tangles of thistle to ward off passers-by. Like _Days of Heaven_ three decades later, nature allowed to take over, as quiet but nothing to break the wind.

He doesn’t understand how people can live with so much unused space and supposes they just fill it up with useless shit. Hanging rugs over blank walls because the floors are already laid corner to corner with them, he wonders if they have them on rotation or if there is something decidedly more special about the ones that adorn the walls. How does one decide between untouchable art and practical function?

He knows Russians hung carpets on the walls to keep warm, and heating a mansion this size cannot be cheap. Maybe the rugs on the walls serve two purposes. Maybe he needs to keep his uninformed criticisms to himself, he thinks, taking a drag, tapping ash off the edge of the stone railing. He feels the bite of his mother’s palm on his cheek. _Don’t be so fucking smug with me, Forsythe_.

He leans his forehead against the knee of a stone gargoyle, perched over the edge of the balcony like it is ready to drop off and take flight. His hairline is sweaty underneath his beanie, and he nudges it up to press his bare skin to the cold stone. The summers are just as humid here as they are in Toledo, especially when they lived in that house near Oak Harbor by the marshlands.

His mother filled their house with stranger curios than the Blossoms, so he isn’t one to pass judgment. The skeleton of every venomous snake in North America was displayed throughout the house, the delicate curve of each pale rib carefully pieced together, fangs and vestigials intact, posed in every which way – slithering, coiled, ready to strike.

The Mojave Green was mounted above his childhood bed. When he was little, while everyone slept, he was convinced the snakes would move about the house at night, and so he stared wide-eyed at the skeleton above his head waiting for it to slither down the wall, over his headboard, and into his bed to sink its fangs into him. On cold nights, he hoped maybe it would only crawl under his blankets to share his warm bed, and then he would hear his mother whispering in his ear. _Remember, Forsythe, never trust a snake. Snakes can never be your friend_. 

He wonders if the snakes are still in that house or, with no one to watch them, they have slithered off into the hayfields, into the grass where they belong.

Finishing his cigarette, he puts it out on the side of the gargoyle and drops it onto the balcony.

He has not slept under a snake in almost two years, but he still dreams about that Mojave Green slinking across the walls and under his bed. Sometimes he wakes to feeling the points of fangs sinking somewhere on his skin, phantom stings as he kicks his covers off the bed, hands searching the sheets for the errant serpent.

He rubs absently at his upper arm, turning to go back inside. Lamp glow fills the windows, and peering through the French doors, he spots a huddled group stumbling into the room. Someone topples into the bed, slowly shrimping their way across the duvet, and when another lamp flickers on, he gets a flash of pale legs across the dark bedspread.

“Are you sure about this?” He hears through the windowed door, and Jug wonders if they can see him standing on the unlit balcony.

A boy in a summer linen suit comes around the bedside, and another, the uncertain one, looks stranded by the door. The guy in the linen suit urges, “What is the one thing you have wanted to do since Barbie Junior showed up in that teasing little pink skirt two years ago? This is your only chance, Chuckles.”

Jughead’s gaze lands on the sprawl of pale legs across the velvet duvet, Barbie Junior, the girl on the bed, only she isn’t in a little pink skirt. He can agree that dress is probably too short for someone with legs like those.

“Jesus, don’t give me that look like we haven’t done this before. Nut up, Clayton.” Linen suit smacks Chuckles Clayton on the side of the head. “Look at her.” He mutters the next part, and Jughead, relying partially on lip-reading, catches _Virgin Mary_. “Lodge is well-worn, but Betty, she’s the last frontier at Canterbury.” Betty, the girl on the bed.

“What if people find out? Aren’t your parents in business with the Lodges?” Clayton pushes off the door jamb when the guy in the linen suit kneels on the bed. “Nick,” he warns as Nick leans over the girl on the bed to check if she is awake.

Jug thinks he might flip her skirt down, a token gesture of courtesy, but he curls his fingers around her chin, tilts her face towards him. On instinct, Jug reaches for the door handle. It rattles in his hand, but neither Clayton nor Nick seem to notice.

Nick doesn’t pull a reaction from the girl on the bed, and he seems satisfied with that, humming a smirk at her oblivion. Jughead swallows, straining to hear the next bit, his grip tightening on the door handle.

“You’re a total fucking tease, aren’t you, beautiful.” Nick tilts his eyes towards Clayton, angles the girl’s face in turn as if to prove his point. “Look at her, man,” he orders, shifting a little so Clayton can see her face, relaxed, all of her so limp and unaware with her chin pinched between Nick’s ill-intent and Clayton’s crumbling apprehension. “You want to keep trying to do this the old-fashioned way? This is the closest we’ll get.” He releases her, her head thumping to the mattress without ado.

Nick sits up, shedding his linen suit jacket. “We got lucky with Ronnie finally sealing the deal on Archie. Barbie practically begged for that mickie, didn’t you, princess,” he says fondly, draping his jacket next to the girl on the bed. He brushes stray strands of blonde hair from her face, whispering something that looks like _sleeping beauty_.

Jug pulls the door towards him without twisting the handle when the realization barrels towards him like a 40-ton logging truck, and he feels just like that, a silent witness stranded just around the bend, gawking at the shine of headlights eating up the tar-black, wondering what the fuck he is going to do.

Through the window, Jug watches Nick use one hand to undo the first two buttons of his shirt as his other smooths through her blonde hair fanned across the dark blue velvet. “Fucking flawless,” he murmurs reverently, his hand gliding from her hair to her neck, her bare shoulder and the thin strap of her little red dress. “It’s a waste. And you, Betty Cooper, it’d be a tragedy to waste you.”

Clayton slides onto the mattress opposite Nick, both of them bracketing the girl on the bed now, and he reaches hesitantly for one coltish leg limp and akimbo on the velvet. His breath seems to hitch when he makes contact, and Nick smirks at him. “Glad to have you with us.”

Whipping the door open, Jug grabs the first thing his hands come in contact with on the bedside table. As Nick turns his surprised gape up at him, the tome strikes his cheekbone with enough force to send the kid sprawling across the floor. Jughead lifts the volume to bring it down on the other, but Clayton is quicker, raising his arm to block and take the blow. Then, Jug feels a right hook connect with his jaw. He trips backwards over Nick bent on the ground, checking his teeth and spitting blood onto the Persian rug. Jug lands hard on his tailbone, but doesn’t have a moment to gain his bearings before Clayton straddles him, his fist colliding with the same spot, once, twice.

Reeling, Jughead is vaguely aware that Clayton knocks him a few more times, twice in his left eye. Instinct sends his arms and legs upwards, planting on Clayton’s chest and hips and shoving him to the side as Jug scrambles towards the door. 

He can barely see through both eyes as his left one starts to swell up, blurry with blood, but he stumbles into something hard near the open door, something more forgiving than the door itself. “Jug, Jesus.” Archie.

“Oh my god,” Veronica screeches. “You fucking animals.”

Jughead pushes off Archie back into the room, remembering the girl on the bed, that he was about to leave without the girl on the bed. “Call the police,” he mumbles to Archie, but if the words sound garbled to him, they must be incoherent to the redhead.

Nick groans and sways to his feet. He tries to steady himself with a hand on the mattress. When Jughead spots Nick’s hand so close to the girl on the bed, he nearly lunges again, but Archie has a hold on his shoulder, either holding him back or preventing him from toppling over, Jughead is unsure.

“Fucking calm down,” Nick grinds out slowly, swearing as he gingerly and manually moves his jaw, wincing. He sounds less intelligible than Jughead. “I think,” he starts, closing his eyes against a flare of pain as he splints his jaw with his hand. “You broke my fucking jaw.” 

“Not broken enough if you’re still talking,” Veronica snaps. “I swear to god, Nicky, you are so screwed.”

Clayton stands up coughing, wheezing. Jughead must’ve knocked the wind out of him. “We didn’t do anything. We just brought her up here to cool off. She asked us to,” he tries to explain.

“They’re lying,” Jughead says, cupping his bad eye.

“I know they’re lying, Galahad,” Veronica snipes, her unpredictable rage scraping at him.

“It’s your word against ours,” Clayton argues. “Besides, who the fuck is this kid?”

Nick rounds the bed, and Chuck props him up when he looks about ready to capsize. “Who are you going to believe, Ronnie? Chuckles and me?” He presses his hand to his heart in mock earnest, and he looks and sounds like a clown through the mess of his mouth. “Or this passing homeless kid? I mean, I assume.” Nick chummily claps Chuck’s shoulder. “Besides, you know Chuckles adores Betty. He would never hurt her, would you, Chuck?” Likely nursing a hairline jaw fracture and yet lathering the bullshit nonetheless, Jughead silently berates himself for not smacking that arrogant mug senseless. He glances at Veronica to see if she is buying.

“Over my dead body,” Chuck swears, and Veronica looks between them both, thankfully with a healthy dose of skepticism. Jughead waits patiently for the fire and brimstone, but then the brunette takes a deep breath, narrows her eyes in suspicion until they close completely. Jug’s stomach dips when she waves Nick and Chuck towards the door.

As he passes, Nick throws his shoulder into Jughead, and Archie is quick to shove him back in warning. Chuck completes it by ushering Nick forward with a very intentional look towards Jughead, the threat plain, and then an empty glance at Archie. Jug doesn’t feel Archie relax until they disappear around the corner. 

“Ronnie,” Archie murmurs, something accusatory, worried in his tone.

“Archie,” she flares in return, abandoning them both to check the girl on the bed.

Archie looks caught, braced on the edge of something as he glances at Veronica shaking the girl on the bed and back to Jughead staggering on his feet, prodding the pulpy mess of his face. “You should go back to the dorms, Jughead.” It isn’t a suggestion, and Jughead wants to ask if that’s it, if that’s all they get, if that’s all the girl on the bed deserves, but there is something like embarrassment edging into Archie’s cheeks, a flush of red, or maybe anger. Jughead hopes it is anger when Archie stares at the blank space in the open bedroom door, but then it deflates so quickly into defeat that Jughead doesn’t think he ever saw it. That look of defeat ambles across the bedroom and lands on the two girls on the bed.

He hears Veronica’s gentle murmurs to the girl on the bed as she carefully arranges the blonde’s skirt to cover more of her thighs. Her dark eyes turn up toward Jughead, that look of failure mirroring her boyfriend’s. “Nothing happened?”

His head feels cold, and when he skims his hair, he realizes he lost his hat somewhere in the fray. Through his one good eye, he spots his crown next to the large book on the ground, the one with the dark smear of Nick along the edge. He trudges across the bedroom, reaches for his beanie and notes the gold lettering embossed across the front cover, _Holy Bible_. With a bloody chuckle, he wonders exactly who he just faced with the good book and what hallmark suggestions Evernever would offer about his piss-poor people skills now because he glances at Veronica with something that feels like contempt, polluted with disappointment, which she has not earned. Maybe the disappointment is more for Archie. He hoped for more.

Veronica recognizes the animosity instantly and Jughead watches the mask of conceited hostility slide over her features, but her reactive antipathy barely scratches the surface of his own. He has her number now. He has Chuck’s. Nick’s. Even Archie’s. “Nothing happened, right?” She sounds more urgent this time, trying to conceal her desperation behind her pride, her desperation to know that no, no one did anything untoward, that the girl on the bed, she remains unscathed, relatively, and most of all, that none of it is Veronica’s fault. Desperate to know that everything can continue on as it always has, predictably, comfortably, that Veronica and Archie and the girl on the bed – they can retreat to their refuges of self-entitlement where egomaniacal predators like Nick St. Claire and Chuck Clayton were just delusions of their denial.

“Yeah,” Jughead offers like he is throwing scraps to a mutt. “Nothing happened.”

* * *

Archie nudges him awake, and Jughead shifts against the hard seat of the pew, lifting his forehead from his palm. He opens the pamphlet for today’s service, but the words blur together and he recognizes none of the psalms on the agenda. As he flips to the backside for any announcements, he makes eye contact with the guidance counselor sitting in the next pew over, and Evernever gestures at his eye in reference to Jughead’s messed up face.

Jughead ducks his head away, crumpling the service pamphlet in his hand.

Veronica sits nearer the front. She turns her head to look at Archie, smiles at her boyfriend like she just ate the canary and waves conspicuously. When she turns her eyes on Jughead, she mouths _spaz_ and twists back to face forward as the procession reaches the altar. Jughead watches her whisper something to the girl sitting next to her, watches the girl’s springy blonde ponytail bounce as she giggles in response. The priest gives both girls the eye, and the blonde ponytail comes to a quick standstill, her shoulders squaring as she sits up straighter.

As the priest makes the Sign of the Cross, the girl with the ponytail turns slowly, peering over her shoulder. Archie gives her a little wave, which she returns quickly, cutely, a small secret smile playing on her lips, and Jughead suddenly recognizes her, trying to remember her name.

“Who is that?” He whisper-wonders to Archie.

Archie says _amen_. Jughead misses his cue. But, the redhead follows through, leaning over and confiding to Jug, “That’s Betty Cooper, my childhood friend and my girlfriend’s best friend.”

* * *

He shares three classes with Betty Cooper and two with Veronica and Archie. The four of them have chemistry together, but Jughead cannot count that as a win. He has no classes with Chuck or Nick. Definitely a win.

Mercifully, Archie volunteers to be his lab partner, and for whatever misplaced roommate loyalty Archie feels beholden to, Jughead admires him for it. Jug wonders if his roommate offers to partner up out of pity or guilt, but Archie never asks him what happened Saturday night, so Jughead is unsure where they all stand on that front. But, Archie does not treat him any differently. Jughead cannot figure out whether to be irritated by Archie’s willful dismissal of the events of Saturday night or whether Archie is waiting for Jughead to make the first move. To be fair, Jughead hasn’t brought it up either.

Archie is a kid with momentum, that much is clear, positive energy Jug sometimes finds draining, and based on what Jughead has seen the last few days, the general student body seems to like the redhead, respect him to some extent, even if they also pass him off as a bit of a charming dope. So, Jughead ruminates on why someone like Archie, a goodie-two-shoes from every angle, would give Nick and Chuck a free pass after what they attempted Saturday night. Even more curious, why would Veronica, he thinks, observing the two girls in chemistry while Archie tries to light the Bunsen burner.

Veronica and Betty sit near the front in chemistry, too, just like mass, but Veronica refuses to acknowledge Jughead in public. Even when he is standing right next to her boyfriend. Because of her reluctance to give him any time of day, any basic common courtesy, Jughead is never formally introduced to Betty Cooper, as if Veronica would let him within ten feet of her without throwing him a withering glare, as if what happened Saturday night was Jughead’s fault.

It makes him feel crazy. He wonders if he has a completely surreal take on the events of Saturday night, that maybe he imagined the premeditated date-rape attempt and got his face beat in for another unrelated reason. It wouldn’t be the first time he mad-dogged the wrong mug and got his nut cracked. Maybe someone rung his bell a little too well because everyone acts like nothing happened. Like the frustrated strikes of the flint over the gas burner, he spends most of his first day of school chewing on the clout of Chuck Clayton and Nick St. Claire, waiting for the spark of understanding to catch.

But, he shares English and Civics with Betty alone. He sits near the back while she perches front and center, straight-backed, pencil sharpened and poised with a neat row of highlighters and pens waiting in the wings. For the entire first day of classes, Betty Cooper does not look at him once. And Jughead thinks maybe she doesn’t remember what happened Saturday night. Maybe she doesn’t even know what could have happened, who was involved. Maybe she woke up in her dorm room with Veronica explaining that she blacked out early and Archie had to carry her back the entire way, which was mostly true. Well, all true with some plot holes.

After his last class, physical education with Archie, his roommate tells him he is going out for football again and won’t be back to the dorms until late evening. When Jughead asks whether football tryouts at Canterbury were serious enough to warrant filling up an entire afternoon and evening, Archie grins like he is a little embarrassed and admits he will be spending some time with Veronica afterwards.

“Is there a curfew for weekdays?” Jughead asks, shrugging his uniform shirt back on while Archie slams his locker door closed. 

“Nine but cover for me, please?”

Jughead wonders exactly how he will manage that, and Archie shrugs like it is obvious. “Say anything. They aren’t exactly too serious about it if the excuse is believable enough. I’m finishing a load of laundry. I’m borrowing a book from a friend on the floor below us, since they usually do bed checks from the ground up. Switch it up, though.”

Someone claps him on the shoulder none too gently. “So, Jug-head, are you going out for football, too?” Chuck stares down at him, white-knuckling his shoulder, and Jughead feels his collarbone tweaking.

Another kid, friends with Archie, he thinks, Reggie snorts, yanking a practice jersey over his shoulder pads. “I’d love to see that.”

“You should,” Chuck says with faux encouragement. “It really builds strength, doesn’t it, boys? Then maybe you wouldn’t be such a limp dick in a fight. Nice face by the way.” He pokes Jug’s eye, and Jughead cannot stop himself from flinching back, grinding his teeth against the flare of pain and heat from the brief prod.

“Chuck, back off,” Archie warns, steering his way between them.

“I’m just trying to be helpful, Arch.”

Jughead finishes buttoning up his uniform shirt, stuffs his tie into his pants pocket to save himself time for what comes next, save himself some trouble if he needs to use it. “You’re right, Chuck,” he agrees, standing up and closing his locker. “I lack physical strength. We can all admit that, but you know, I do have one strength you will never have.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that, _Tears for Fears_?” Chuck bites, calling him on his bluff.

“I’m not so weak that I have to drug girls to get them into bed with me. That’s some grade A moral fiber you’re sporting there, Chuckles,” he says, flashing him an A-OK that quickly devolves into a slow stroking motion.

Chuck lunges forward, almost shouldering past Archie who shoves him backwards. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, you fucking creep,” he warns, pointing past Archie, and Jughead stares Chuck down.

“Yeah, I know what I saw, and I know what I heard, and I know guys like you, they always do it again. Worse, guys like you, they get away with it, over and over.” Jughead’s gaze scans the boys flanking Chuck Clayton, ready to jump into the fray if it gets that far. “As for the rest of you,” he starts, slinging his messenger bag over his shoulder. “Well, my mother always told me birds of a feather flock together, so good luck next time, fellas. Just know I’m watching.”

“You don’t know what you saw, Jones,” Chuck cautions a final time.

After every near miss with some catastrophe, every time Jughead limped home after a riot broke out at school, when he took three rubber bullets to the chest pushing Joaquin out of the way, or when some people came looking for his mother and he let them nearly drown him in the marshlands on the bank of the Erie, he would ask himself if he had a death wish, if he invited that sort of chance into his life, the kind of chance that might send him into the great nothing place of the hereafter. Or if his mother had instilled in him that reckless mentality, that trademark Jones temerity to insert themselves into a lose-lose situation. 

“Keep doing what you’re doing, Chuckles. I dare you,” Jug pushes, smiling now, and he wonders if he looks like a psycho. _I want to be the one that catches you_. “I need a win,” he jokes. _I hope you rot in hell._ “And putting a needle-dick date rapist and his little date rapist buddies in jail, well, that would complete my high school experience, a real feather in my cap for college admissions, so please, Chuckles, I fucking dare you.” _I want to be the one that puts you there._

Chuck and his band of not-so-merry jocks surge forward, railroading Archie to the side, and Jughead breaks for the door, bursting out onto the basketball courts. Coach Kline comes roaring from his office, placing himself directly between the dumb smartass sprinting across the courts and the mob of jocks barreling towards him for blood. Jughead hears Coach Kline howling for him to get his ass back in the locker room, but he flies out of the double doors onto the tennis courts, racing around the gymnasium and back towards the main building.

* * *

He would blame his mother for his reactionary bad habits, and perhaps he started something he probably cannot finish without getting his ass handed to him a few more times, but nothing would satisfy him more to finish it. And he will. He can handle a beating. His mother made sure of that. _You really have a knack for writing your own death certificate, Jones_.

Double checking the room number, he wanders around the west wing of the main building looking for the only useful thing he found in the envelope Evernever gifted him on his first day.

He finds the office at the end of the hall on the other side of the chemistry prep room where Dr. Benzene prepares the reactions for tomorrow’s lab. He gets a light whiff of phenol as he passes, strangely magnetic but promising something worse, and the smell gets stuck in his nose as he knocks on the door, _Blue and Gold_ painted on the marbled glass.

Someone calls from inside, “It’s open!”

He waltzes into the office of the school newspaper with a prepared opening statement and sample writing in a blue folder inside his messenger bag. He promptly forgets about all of it, his words stapled to the tip of his tongue when he spots her sitting at the desk bent over a Remington with a small toothbrush and bottle of isopropyl. Rushing in so quickly and without thought, he ends up too close to the desk, practically on top of her, and when her face flashes up at him in surprise, he sees for the first time that her eyes are green. And not hazel-green or green but really blue, but _green_ green, as green as the spring hayfields green.

Setting the toothbrush down, the surprise dims from her eyes, replaced by something more remote but cordial nonetheless. “Can I help you?”

He hurries to fumble through his messenger bag for the writing samples, rips the folder cover in his haste. “Hi, yeah, I’m.” He yanks the folder out of his bag, nearly brandishes it in her face before restraining himself, setting it down gingerly next to the typewriter she was cleaning. “Yeah, these are writing samples.”

“Great,” she says with polite interest. “Did you want to join the paper?”

“I wanted to talk to the editor-in-chief,” he finally manages to say aloud.

She smiles without teeth, amiable but distant, and it drags him forward into that green. “You’re talking to her.”

“Oh,” he utters dumbly.

She raises an eyebrow. Her eyelashes are longer than he imagined. “Oh?”

“Oh, good,” he elaborates. Relatively. _Use your words, Forsythe. I didn’t raise a simpleton._ “Yes, good, I want to join the paper.”

She glances at the folder by her arm, back up at him.

He feels like his cheeks are burning and nearly reaches to take the offending folder away. It feels like a misstep, the writing samples. “Is there some formal application process?” This was how he applied for the _Red and Black_ back in Toledo. His previous editor Toni ran a tight-ass ship, and she wanted to make sure her writers could string together two coherent sentences with a minimum of two grammatical mishaps. 

“I’m trying to think of how to say it,” she starts, sliding the rubbing alcohol and toothbrush away from her to reach for the blue folder, Canterbury blue with gold lettering across the front because he thought that would be a good touch, a good show of faith.

She flips to the first article, skims the first page. While she reads, he wonders how she manages to keep the curl of her ponytail tight and perfect for an entire school day, not a single noticeable fly-away, and he wants to trace that smooth spiral with one curious finger to see if he can get one to sprout up. “There isn’t exactly a formal process. We’re not the _Times_ , and we don’t have a lot of aspiring writers lined up around the block,” she explains, gesturing at the empty office.

“So,” he trails off, glancing around the half-empty shelves, the dusty monitor in the corner. “It’s just you.”

The corners of her mouth quirk up, a self-conscious smile playing, wavering. “It’s just me. Yearbook draws a bigger crowd, but I still put an issue out once a month.”

“Once a month!” She raises her eyebrows at his outburst, and he clears his throat. Toni had a weekly issue. “Sorry, I’m – I didn’t mean to make it seem like I’m looking down on you. I’m just used to a larger operation back home.”

“Where is home?”

“Toledo,” he supplies.

Recognition blooms on her face, and for a moment, he wonders if she remembers him from Saturday night. Nothing about their interaction so far has given him any indication she recalls what happened the night of Cheryl Blossom’s end-of-summer party. “Oh, you’re the new kid,” she chirps, smiling like she has finally put a pin in him. It definitely feels that way, like he is pinned, but he knows now that neither Veronica nor Archie told this girl, supposedly their best friend, what happened Saturday night.

“Veronica was telling me Archie had a new roommate from Ohio. You must know Veronica, Archie’s girlfriend. She’s my best friend. Well, so is Archie.” That is some round-about ass-backwards triangle, he thinks.

“Yeah, I’m from Ohio originally, but I moved here from in state.”

“You’re on scholarship, right?”

He nods, waits for that nugget of information to precipitate pity or ridicule, prejudgment either way, but something like admiration lights up her face. “You wrote that short story for the _New Yorker_ , the one about the cult, murder in the Midwest or something.”

He smothers a smile, points to the first article in the folder, the short story in question. Her eyes follow his index and she sees the title, _Murder in Magee Marsh,_ the story of the snake witch of the Erie. 

“I can’t wait to read it,” she tells him and sounds like she means it. “But, this is creative writing. Why do you want to write for the _Blue and Gold_?”

“I’ve developed a taste for exposes,” he declares, thinking of Chuck Clayton and Nick St. Claire and the rest of the Canterbury Saints, an oxymoron in his mind now.

She gives him a questioning look. “I thought it was a work of fiction.” 

“Doesn’t all fiction have some basis in real life experience?”

A mental hiccup kicks its way through his brain as he remembers he never once hinted to anyone – the editors, the interviewers, even his father - that there was a hint of truth to the story, and yet the confession settles there, idling between the words. She smiles like she has caught him in an admission of guilt, and he thinks offhand if the scales of fate were controlled by a girl like her, he would willingly offer up his pound of flesh for her judgment. “To some extent,” he adds like a last ditch effort to mislead her.

He feels like something has been taken from him, and he gave it up too freely. She turns her green eyes back to the first page, rereads the first sentence, and he watches her gaze sharpen with interest, not so polite, something with more intention. Without looking up, she tells him, “We meet Mondays and Wednesdays after school. If you can, you can also sign up for a free second period independent study that meets Tuesdays and Thursdays. I can give you the scheduling code for the administration. Are you still interested – ?” Her forehead wrinkles with a thought and she looks up suddenly. “What was your name again?”

“I’m Jughead.”

The name doesn’t ring a bell. His teachers called him Forsythe today, and he had to go up to each one after class and request they call him by his preferred name. Two outright refused – his math teacher and Coach Kline, who stated quite bluntly that he didn’t give two shits what name he preferred. ‘You go by your Christian name or you go by the door. Enjoy that F, Mr. Jones.’ They settled on his last name as a compromise.

“Jughead. Is that a nickname?” Somehow it does not sound as ridiculous when she says it. He fails to detect even the suggestion of a hyphen.

“It’s better than the real thing.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Her smile binds him up inside. “Betty Cooper.” He stares at her outstretched hand, the pale delicate wrist and ruddy palms, and just before his hand takes hers, he thinks he sees the barest hints of little dark smiles lined up on her palms, almost like a tattoo. His upper arms itches with the thought and for some reason he recalls Evernever’s smile, the inside joke, asks himself if he will end up being the punchline.


	2. speak no evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Six sides to every lie I say_   
>  _It’s that American voice again_   
>  _It was never quite like this before_   
>  _Not one of you is the same_
> 
> Six Different Ways by The Cure

He could barely hear her laughter over the buzz of the cicadas, but what he did catch was like the tinkling of wind chimes behind the shiver and shake of the rattlesnake weed, dragging the bunches in her hand across the tops of the grasses.

He crawls away from the rattles and chimes, stifling his own laughter and keeping his head below the grass-line. She holds the bunches of weeds above her head, and the dried capsules quiver in the wind sounding like a hundred snakes. Jughead shrieks with childish terror, sprouting up above the grass-line and tearing off towards the house.

“Mommy, no,” he pleads high and loud, hearing the rattles behind his ear, chancing a glance over his shoulder.

The toe of his sneaker snags on a tangle of catchweed, sending him headfirst to the ground. He skids along a grouping of downed thistle.

Seated on the prairie floor, he cups hands over the skinned knee, feeling the grasses crowding him, bedstraw clinging to his clothes. He moves his palm to survey the damage, blood dotted on his palms, smeared over his knee and growing blacker like ink as the light dies behind him, the sky dimming from sterile blue to brown and yellow, thunderstorm weather. Thistle poking at his cheek and catchweed under his shirt, his chin wrinkles and wobbles. He hears the rattles shaking and buzzing over his head.

“Mommy, no,” he begs, almost in tears when the false rattles slide along the back of his neck, followed closely by the feel of scales.

_Mom, stop_. He feels a pinch and a prick, then a surge of heat and deep pain in his left arm, his whole body jolting up and awake.

Perched above him in nothing but running shorts as red as the sweaty mop of hair on his head, Archie moves to steady him. Jug snaps his shoulder out of reach, and his roommate throws his hands up. “Hey man, you’re in your room.”

That’s right. Oak Harbor and that house and the hayfields and the marshes and Lake Erie are hundreds of miles and years away now.

“Did you get that tattoo to cover up the scar?” Archie asks as they get ready for school.

Jug rotates his arm forward to inspect the ink curving along the round of his shoulder. The tail dips and scales the silvery ravines that never quite filled in with scar tissue. “Doesn’t do a good job, does it?”

“How did it happen?”

Jughead shrugs on his uniform shirt, rolls the sleeves down to conceal the scar that ends at his elbow, the brand – tattoo. “Childhood accident, got hit by a car on my bike,” he lies. “I lost a lot of the skin on my arm. They did a graft.”

“I heard when that happens they take skin from your ass,” Archie comments.

Jughead snorts. “Yeah, I have ass skin on my arm.” The reconstructive surgeons actually used skin from his thigh.

“Gross.”

Archie starts swiping a comb through his wet hair, and Jughead bunches his sleeve up, moves to rub the scar against Archie’s face. “Hey, don’t touch me with your ass skin.”

“Come here,” Jughead beckons, slinging his arm around his roommate’s neck and wrangling him into a headlock.

“Oh god, it still smells like butt,” Archie gripes, wrestling against the hold, and after a few satisfying moments of scrubbing Archie’s face with his scar, he releases his roommate, laughs when Archie dead-arms him.

* * *

Archie does not seem to have a single deceitful bone in his body, and whenever Jughead feels himself settling into the comfort of his company, he automatically tenses up. The redhead is just so unassuming and open that Jughead has to remind himself to stay on guard. His mother used to say, _your level of awareness equals your chances of survival, Forsythe_. And yet it is so easy to just sink into the oblivion of Archie’s company, especially in the privacy of their dorm room. It is no wonder he ended up dreaming about her, let Archie see him like that. He needs to stay vigilant.

“You bulking up for something?” Archie wonders, eyeing the tower of breakfast foods on Jughead’s tray. “I mean, I’m trying to up my weight class for wrestling, but where does all of that even go?” He gives Jug a thorough onceover.

On their way to a free table, they pass a group of students playing what looks like a combination roleplaying board game. Jughead recognizes the kid with the birth control glasses from the end-of-the-summer party. He seems to be leading the game, peering at the others over a folder propped on the tabletop, a keen watchful eye on the next player rolling the dice.

“What are they playing?”

“Griffins and Gargoyles,” Archie supplies, raising his tray to shoulder-level as they squeeze through the narrow gaps between the tables. He almost clocks one of the players on the head, a blonde kid with a placid face that seems enthralled by the game, unaware of the tray bare millimeters from cracking him in the nut.

“Seriously?” It isn’t an uncommon game. He heard about it in Toledo, but he never played. He didn’t even know the rules. “Do you play?” Jughead never engaged personally, but he had noted the fervor with which its most devoted players participated. Just before he left Toledo, the game had started to develop an avid cult following.

Archie shrugs. “Sometimes. I’m not die-hard like them.” Jughead laughs at the unintended pun that Archie breezes right past. “But, it’s fun every now and again. We get into it.”

“We?”

“Some guys from the team, for fun.”

  
They find an empty table, and Jughead still wonders why Archie doesn’t sit with his team. He hasn’t gotten around to asking Archie why he sticks to him so much. The kid has friends, probably friends that are not _persona non grata_ with half the football team. 

Jughead glances at the table of the head spirit bunnies in their cheerleader uniforms. Veronica and Betty are seated dutifully on either side of their tyrant mistress Cheryl Blossom. “You’re not going to sit with your girlfriend?”

Archie looks over his shoulder. “Not when she’s holding court,” he jokes, giving his girlfriend a small wave. She twinkles her fingers at him cutely, stopping when Cheryl’s eyes pass in her direction.

Seeing Betty reminds him that he wanted to double check with her about the afterschool meeting times for the paper, and he moves to stand up.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to ask Betty something,” Jughead explains, negotiating his legs out from the small space between the bench seat and the table. These must be the same cafeteria tables from the school’s founding, he thinks wryly.

“I wouldn’t man,” Archie warns, swigging half his orange juice as he glances back at his girlfriend’s table.

Jughead rolls his eyes. He has faced worse demons than Cheryl Blossom.

“Hey, Betty,” he starts, kneeling on the empty bench.

The redhead immediately snaps, “Excuse you, but who said you could talk to us?”

Veronica chimes in, “Are you lost, boy?” Smiling like she thinks it is the cleverest thing to ever be said.

Jughead’s knee slowly slips from the metal bench seat. The three girls stare up at him expectantly, either for an explanation or a hasty, humiliating retreat. “I wasn’t talking to an _us_. I was talking to Betty. Betty?”

“Do I know you?” Okay, more polite but cold and distant, decidedly less bite, less venom than her redheaded and brunette counterparts, but no less painful.

“Like Veronica said, are you lost?” Cheryl cuts in again.

Jughead’s eyes move to the central despot on autopilot. “Not lost,” he mutters, actually at a bit of a loss.

“Well, get lost,” Cheryl chirps, making a sweeping motion with her perfectly manicured hand, blood red nails sharp and polished and directed back across the cafeteria where he should belong.

Jughead feels a rant brewing. Yelling would make him feel better, but then his mother in his ear, _better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt, Forsythe_.

Jughead finds himself dropping back into the seat across from Archie, who slides him an unopened carton of chocolate milk on the backs of his knuckles. “Told you. They’re pretty vicious when they’re together.”

“You can’t talk to your own girlfriend in public?” Jughead cracks open the chocolate milk to wash down his shame. He expected ready-made disdain from Veronica and Cheryl, but Betty. That was a curve.

“It’s not as bad as,” Archie gestures at the general aura of Jughead’s public humiliation. “But, it isn’t great. I’ve found it’s best to just let her run what she calls her ‘business.’” Marking the word with physical quotations, Archie offers a few extra pieces of bacon to Jughead. “Something about maintaining the appearance of unimpeachable power. Her words, not mine.

Jughead accepts the bacon with an empty thanks, mindlessly stuffing his mouth. He didn’t imagine Betty could be so cold. He almost regrets signing up for that independent study period now.

He catches the eye of Chuck Clayton sitting at a table with the rest of the jocks, smirking at Jughead. Archie traces his gaze and snaps his fingers in front of Jug’s face. “You don’t want to pick a fight with Chuck. Or Nick St. Claire. I really suggest you let it go.”

“Why?” It is in his nature to push the envelope.

Archie leans in conspiratorially and whispers, “Nick’s family is – now this is just a rumor – but people say they’re in organized crime.”

“So what? Is he going to break my legs himself or get daddy to do it,” Jughead jokes, killing the rest of his bacon, but he knows what Archie implies. Without hard evidence, money wins out in the end, and to be sure, those two assholes are swimming in trust funds. Even with concrete proof of those two shit-bags’ misdeeds, Jughead might not come out on top in the end.

Chuck gets up and approaches the table of teenage autocrats. He side-eyes Jug as he asks after the girls, if Jughead was bothering them. Cheryl scoffs, _as if_. Betty smiles, shaking her head, _that’s sweet, Chuck_. Veronica, face pinched, writes him off with a sharp turn of her head.

“So, you and Betty,” Archie inquires innocently.

Jughead swirls the last of his chocolate milk. “She’s the editor of the newspaper, Arch. Don’t be weird.” What he must remind himself every time he is in her presence.

“Good luck,” Archie finishes, glancing at Chuck’s conspicuous lean across the cafeteria table towards Betty. The redhead seems put-out by it, Chuck’s proximity to Betty. “You’ve got some tough competition in Chuck, Jug.”

Jughead actually feels affronted. “What? You think I’d lose to that misogynist? Have we already forgotten what happened at Cheryl’s party?”

Archie shifts uncomfortably in his seat. They have not exactly broached the subject of the Blossom’s end-of-the-summery party a week ago. “I just mean, he has been a good guy to Betty, Nick St. Claire notwithstanding. Especially after what happened with her sister and Jason Blossom, she said he was, her words, ’a great comfort’, or something like that.”

Jughead perks up, inquiring quickly. “What happened with her sister and Jason Blossom?”

“Wow, you really latch onto this stuff, don’t you?” Jughead can smell a meaty story a mile away. Toni used to say he was like a dog with a bone. “They were dating, Jason and her sister Polly. She kind of had a nervous breakdown after everything happened. Everyone always thought she was a little crazy, but after Jason killed himself, she really went off the deep end, saying stuff like Jason was murdered, that there were secret tombs underneath the school, that some weird cult had sacrificed Jason, just really bizarre stuff. It did a number on Betty, seeing her sister like that. I guess Chuck was supportive.”

“Yeah, sounds just like him,” Jughead scoffs softly, glancing over his shoulder and locking eyes with Chuck across the cafeteria, that shit-eating smirk making Jug’s left eye throb something awful.

* * *

He stands in front of the door to the _Blue and Gold_ for a solid five minutes, stewing in the stench of black licorice from Dr. Benzene’s seemingly constant chemical tom-cookery, before he musters the courage to even reach for the doorknob. The begrudging stamp of the office admin’s approval for his independent study wavers in and out of focus on the yellow class slip in his hands, her clipped words that the date for submitting independent study requests passed over a week ago. If it weren’t for Principal Weatherbee’s divine intervention – _this boy is published in the New Yorker, Mrs. Sales_ – she might not have given it to him. How bad would it be if he tucked tail back to the front office and asked to be transferred into musical theory with Archie. How much more track is he going to pull with this _New Yorker_ story.

The door flies open. She brandishes a gingersnap cookie in his face, pilfered from last night’s dinner. “I’m sorry.”

It’s – it’s adorable enough to breed some resentment.

“I could see the shadow of your shoes under the door.” Of course she could. She would notice that.

The brown sugar confection sways under his nose, but he wants to nip at her instead, bite the hand that feeds. “Why does everybody keep trying to comfort me with food?”

She bops him on the tip of his nose with the cookie, and he snatches it out of her hand.

“Archie said you eat a lot. For him, that’s, well,” she pauses, looking him up and down in that same Archie way. “Where does it all go?”

He shoves the entirety of the cookie in his mouth. “You know Mary Poppins?” He asks through a gob full of cookie. She nods, and he makes a vague circular motion over his stomach. “You got any more apologies in there?”

He follows close behind her into the room, kicking the door shut behind him. While she rummages in her backpack, he untangles himself from his book bag, takes the chance to survey the room. Half the shelves are empty, and the large corkboard is empty except for a year-old flyer for the Winter Formal. It feels like a challenge.

“I told my mother about your story, that you wanted to join the _Blue and Gold_ ,” she tells him with her back turned. “She loved that story, you know. Said I could dream to be as noteworthy at such a young age, to be published in the _New Yorker_.”

“Bet she wouldn’t say that if she took one look at me,” he reasons. Or knew how much truth there was to that story.

Betty bobs her head back and forth like she agrees, but then she says, tossing him a sandwich bag filled with three more big gingersnaps, “She knows good work when she reads it.” Implying she rarely receives such a compliment on her own writing, certainly not from her mother. He knows from his little bit of research on her that her family is in the newspaper business, that she is probably the heiress apparent.

“Tell her I’m a one hit wonder,” he offers, bolstering her self-esteem while his still lies bruised from breakfast. He should be angrier. The cookie softens the pain. He shouldn’t be such a sucker for food, or the way her legs look in that plaid skirt. She must hem it higher than regulation. He knows Cheryl Blossom has definitely altered her own.

“I’m sure you have at least one more in the tank,” she assures him.

“Guess we’ll test that theory,” he says with a shrug, looking over her agenda splayed open on the nicked ink blotter. “So, what’s on the docket today, boss?”

“You’re not going to ask me about breakfast?”

_Mmm, guilt_ , tastes almost as good as the cookie. “You said you were sorry.” He stuffs another cookie in his mouth, chews and muses. “I won’t say I’m not curious about how your co-tyrants feel about you working with me on the newspaper.”

She admits quietly, “They don’t know yet.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t seem like their type.” He finishes another cookie and hops up onto her desk, kicking his heels into the sides while he fiddles with her pens. He’s got sugar rush now. That must be it.

“I’ve known them since middle school,” she defends, as if time and not actions have earned her loyalty.

He snorts. “Yeah, I bet you ruled the lower castes then with that same pastel-colored iron fist.”

When she shifts uncomfortably on the heels of her Mary-Janes, no good excuses left in the chamber, he throws his hands up. “Look, I know what it’s like to have to be two people at once, so no, I’m not passing judgment.” He remembers the guy he was at school and the one he had to become at home. After a certain point, he lost sight of which one was real in the first place. After a couple years away, he thinks he might be gaining ground on the right one.

“So, I can’t talk to you in public, fair, but.” He pauses and snaps the last cookie in half, offers one to her. “Your beau?”

“My beau?” He can tell she is biting her cheek to keep from laughing at his use of the word. “You mean Chuck? No, god, he’s like an older brother to me. Sometimes he’s just overprotective,” she explains, waving it off.

No one has told her a damn thing about Cheryl Blossom’s party. That’s okay. He has options, a whole repertoire of methods for ruining Chuck Clayton and Nick St. Claire. It starts with the paper. “What do you report on then, Ms. Cooper?”

She shrugs, and it is too fucking cute. “It’s pretty dull here. Hope you like sporting events. That’s our bread and butter, Mr. Jones.”

He never reported on the football team for the _Red and Black_. It took some teeth pulling on Toni to keep him off that racket, some extra afterschool benefits in exchange for meatier beats. “Well, football season doesn’t kick off for week or so, so what’s the big to-do right now?”

She smiles, and his stomach does somersaults. “Eager, aren’t we?” He is going to crash from all this sugar. He cannot even remember being mad at her.

“Idle hands and the devil’s work and all that,” he contends, and when she glances at his hands, he feels the need to hide them or do something useful, like grab her by the back of the neck and kiss her. He stuffs them in the pockets of his uniform trousers.

“If you’re really jonesing for something to write about.” She catches her unintentional pun on his name, and he laughs when she blushes just slightly. “We have this thing at the beginning of every school year. It isn’t formal, per say, but the lower and upper classes hold a midnight manhunt. It’s for team building, mentorships, that sort of thing. If you want, you can write something on that.”

He deflates. “A fluff piece?”

“It’s for school spirit, Jug. If you’re looking for the next great American expose, you probably shouldn’t have come to Canterbury. We’re not that exciting.”

“What about Jason Blossom?”

That catches her off guard. “What?”

“He killed himself at the end of last year. People still seem pretty broken up about it.”

“That’s – that was months ago now. I don’t think people want a rehashing.”

“Aren’t they doing a memorial for him at the homecoming game? You don’t want to include a little something about him in the paper?” He fishes.

She wasn’t expecting him to take that tack, but she’s mulls the bait. “Well, that’s – that’s actually a good idea.”

He elaborates quickly, mentally nudging her in the direction he wants. “We could do something about that, though, teen suicide, prevalence, mental health, even in a place like this.”

“A place like this?”

“No one would expect the golden boy to kill himself, wealthy family, captain of the football team, good grades, great girlfriend. Where did it all go wrong? That kind of thing.” Then, he remembers himself, that her sister dated Jason Blossom, lost her hinges in the aftermath. _Real sensitive, Jones_.

But, she is nodding, grabbing a steno pad and a purple pen to jot down some notes. “Okay,” she starts, green eyes sharp with intent, and he starts to think this is his favorite Betty Cooper, the one he caught hints of that first day here in the school newspaper office. “

How about you take point on the midnight manhunt, and I’ll start on the memorial for Jason Blossom? Maybe I’ll start some research on your other idea – about the – teenage suicide.” She can barely say it, but she seems sold on the idea. He almost asks if she is too close to it, his bad, he shouldn’t have brought it up, but then, she is following up with, “Remember, student quotes, Jughead. That’s what you’re going out there for tonight.”

He speculates that maybe she doesn’t get to be this Betty Cooper as often as she would like, certainly not often enough with her responsibilities as one of the school’s head bitches in charge. He gets the feeling this Betty Cooper is something closer to the truth. He wonders if he can get her to show this Betty Cooper more often, with him, in here, and maybe, in time, out there, too.

“So," she starts, innocently enough as she finishes the last of her notes, nibbling on her half of the gingersnap. "Are you going to tell me the story behind that eye?”

* * *

During Civics, a student aide drops off a pink slip for Jughead. Ms. Putnam says quite ominously that he has been summoned to the counselor’s office. Jughead snorts, and a few heads turn to look at him, Betty’s included. He gathers his notes, stuffs them haphazardly into his bag, before making his way to the front of the room.

Two knuckles against the frosted glass of room 314, there is barely a second before Evernever ushers him into his office.

Jughead drops into one of the chesterfields, doesn’t bother to unsling his bag from his shoulder. “Am I in trouble then?”

Evernever glances at Jughead before taking his seat behind the desk. He closes a folder before folding his hands on the ink blotter. “I’m only checking in, Jughead. How was your first week?”

Jughead cuts to the chase. “Is this about my eye?”

Eyebrows raised, Evernever sighs out the obvious, “It is bruised.”

“Is that what you’re looking for?” Jughead concludes, and sucks his teeth. “Me to say you were right? Well, you’re not getting it. Contrary to what you think, counselor, I didn’t get this because of my smart-ass mouth,” he explains, jabbing a thumb at his bruised eye.

Evernever leans back in his seat and regards Jughead for a moment. Under silent observation, Jug feels a little ridiculous with his thumb midair and aimed at his shiner, drops his hand.

“You’re quick to the defensive, Mr. Jones. I bet you consider that a virtue. You expect people to judge you based on appearances alone, and perhaps that quick-to-bite approach is based on experience, but your own pre-judgments are a double-edged sword. When you perceive judgment against yourself, you are yourself judging in turn. I was going to ask about your eye, but this doesn’t mean I necessarily assumed it was because of your smart-ass mouth,” Evernever explains slowly, his words carefully chosen. He even smiles as he repeats Jughead’s curse. “I give people the opportunity to explain themselves. I hope you will afford me the same kindness.”

Evernever takes a deep breath and relaxes, as if he is expecting Jughead to do the same. “On that note, how was your first week, Jughead?” Jughead thinks he hears it, an underhanded challenge. _Prove me wrong_.

He decides to open with the juicier highlights of his first week at Canterbury, just to see how the good counselor will fair. “Well, I accused the captain of the football team of attempting to date-rape a girl at Cheryl Blossom’s end-of-the-summer party. Off to a good start, right? Plot twist, turns out the girl is also my roommate’s best friend, one of the school’s head-bitches-in-charge, and the editor of the school newspaper, which I joined. Thanks for the tip, by the way. So, all in all, I started a war with the jocks, made an enemy out of my roommate’s girlfriend, and joined the school newspaper. Oh, and I got clocked in the eye for interrupting that little date-rape I mentioned, hence shiner.” When he finishes, Jughead curls his palms around his knees and stares back at Evernever, throwing the ball back in his court.

When the counselor doesn’t say anything, Jughead smirks. “You can say it, I’m proper screwed.”

“You know, Jughead, I joined the Navy immediately after I graduated high school. Canterbury reminds me of an aircraft carrier. It is a world in and of itself, not beholden to the laws of the outside. Here, people think the principal, the administration, the teachers run things, but honestly the patients are running the asylum. I know, I’m mixing metaphors, but my point is – the students are in charge, and they follow their own special set of rules.”

Jughead snorts. “I’m guessing I can’t buy the handbook at the student store.” He scratches his forehead. “You make it sound like _Lord of the Flies_.”

“I wish I could give you one, but this is learned behavior, Mr. Jones. It is like,” he pauses, thinking of the right word, and smiles again like there is that secret punchline. “Oral tradition. It goes back for many years, generations, and the students here learn it when they are very young. You are coming in late, too late probably, and I’m only worried you won’t be able to handle the learning curve.”

“Maybe I’ll flip the script, counselor,” Jughead offers flippantly, tired of this conversation. It is all a little too kitschy ominous for him. Something about it reminds him of his mother, how she would speak in sinister prognostications that were more often than not designed to scare him or others into submission, and most of the time it ended up being smoke and mirrors. Most of the time. 

* * *

On his way to the quad where they will decide teams and kick off this year’s midnight manhunt, he thinks about Betty Cooper. She has the soft graceful appearance of a Kelly but the sharp investigative eye of a Bacall, and watching her get caught up in the tangled threads of a new story made something flutter and whirl in his gut, even when it was a story that could implicate her own personal history. At least that was something they had in common, if so little else was congruent.

He is already falling back into bad habits, he jokes to himself, crushing on his newest editor-in-chief. The last time he pursued this route, it ended with Jughead as a dirty little secret in the photography darkroom of Toledo High. His delicate flower of a heart survived his hard-edged taskmaster’s combat boot-heel then, and he still got some friendly benefits out of the deal. All in all, he discovered it was his professional admiration masquerading as a naïve crush, and in the end, Toni told him at least she could send him out into the fray with some real-world experience.

But, it isn’t professional admiration this time. Something else, some other quality about her, lures him in like a fresh warm pie on a windowsill, and when he is around her, he floats on air like a cartoon hobo towards that tempting smell. _Pining like an ass_ , he thinks while he checks the settings on his camera, whether the flash is on. That is all he knows how to do well.

He makes it to the quad just a couple of blonde guys, probably seniors, are explaining the rules of the game. Jug barely pays attention to the explanation. He isn’t here for the game, just the story, but he does make note of the two explaining the game, hopes to gather a quote later.

It feels like half the school is crammed into the quad, but he doesn’t see Betty anywhere, and he knows Archie is using the game as an excuse to sneak Veronica into their room. He was given explicit orders not to return until at least one am. If he could make it later, Archie would reward him with something food-related. His peers definitely have him pinned, folding easily for the promise of good food.

There is an announcement that the game starts in ten minutes once the teams move to their respective areas of the quad. Freshmen and sophomores as the hunted; juniors and seniors the hunters.

He uses this opportunity to sideline the event organizers, classic leading men in every respect, which is becoming par for the course at this school, he thinks.

“Hey,” he interjects, offering a hand in greeting. “Jughead Jones, school paper. I was wondering if I could get a quote from you two. You’re the organizers?”

Like night and day, though, despite the similar appearance, he thinks when he gets a closer look. Both blonde and blue-eyed, tall and strack, but the one that takes his hand is a shade more genial, approachable, his demeanor a cross between Archie and Betty somehow. The other doesn’t shake his hand.

“Hey, Betty was telling me someone finally decided to commit social suicide and join the paper. You’re a brave soul, Mr. Jones,” the guy notes as he shakes his hand, and Jughead remembers how small this school really is; nothing gets by anybody. “I’m Charles Cooper, Betty’s older brother. And this stiff is Chic, our cousin. Don’t worry, it’s not you. He’s like that with everybody.” Jughead notices Charles is the only upperclassmen in school uniform, complete with blazer and tie and loafers still polished despite it being the end of the day. Unlike Charles, Chic is in plainclothes like the rest of the seniors.

“Yeah, great meeting you,” Jughead says quickly, nodding at Chic. “So, this midnight manhunt business, it’s tradition here at Canterbury?”

The stolid line of Chic’s mouth curls up into an unnerving smirk. “One of many.”

Jug pauses at that, nods slowly, _okay_.

Charles interjects easily, and Jug can tell the older Cooper is accustomed to playing the social middleman for his cousin. “It started back during the founding of the school. The administration thought it would be a good way to encourage mentorships between the lower and upperclassmen. It’s kind of our version of orientation.”

“An icebreaker,” Chic summarizes.

“It helps the newer students get comfortable,” Charles picks up. “A lot of these kids haven’t been away from home before, and you probably know, boarding school can be a bit of a culture shock. This helps them get acclimated. We want them to have fun with it, and we make sure the older students don’t get carried away.”

“Carried away?”

Charles nods solemnly, like he is almost disappointed to admit to it. “Sometimes we’ve had older students use this game as a hazing ritual,” he explains, glancing at the crowd still sorting out. Jughead traces his gaze to none other than Nick St. Claire and Chuck Clayton on the other side of the quad with a group of letterman jackets. “That isn’t what this is about, and that’s where Chic and I come in.”

“We’re security,” Chic fills in. “Make sure everyone stays in line.”

“We want the new students to feel safe and welcome here at Canterbury.” It sounds like a textbook brochure attestation, and Jughead wonders if Charles hopes he will use that quote in particular, something to feather his transcript come college application season, an equal opportunity nod.

Chic even rolls his eyes, but then turns them on Jughead, empty and anemic blue, and it make him think of Evernever somehow. “Are you playing, Jones?”

Jughead gestures his camera at them. “I’m just going to play the silent observer, if that’s okay. Speaking of which, can I get a shot of you two?”

Chic blanches while Charles lights up, turning to a gaggle of underclassmen to corral a few into the group photo. He even asks if he can get a copy from Jughead, for his personal records of course. Jughead lets him straighten his uniform tie and dust off his blazer before he snaps a few quick shots. Once Charles stops asking for one more photo, Jughead tells them he is going to wander around, take some photos of the night’s antics and the like. Charles asks him if he wants to meet up after the game when they all go to the twenty-four-hour diner just outside of town for fries and milkshakes. Jughead tries to decline as politely as possible.

He spends the next several minutes collecting a handful of quotes from some freshmen, per Betty’s orders, and then wanders towards the group of seniors. It is then he notices Chuck and Nick aren’t with the gang of letterman jackets. _To convenient by half, Jones_ , he thinks, gaze skirting along the circles of freshmen and sophomores, chatty and eager-eyed and easy prey.

He walks up to one of the letterman jackets, easily a hand taller. He wonders offhand what kind of weird Dr. Moreau breeding goes on in these families because while he is not considered short by any means, the height on these kids suggests there is some kind of underhanded designer-baby bullshit afoot, blue-blood eugenics or something close. “Hey, do you know where Nick St. Claire went? I wanted to double check him on a quote for the school newspaper before we print it.”

The kid shrugs, points towards the chapel, “I think he went off with Clayton.” A thoughtful pause that ends with a confused, “Wait, we have a school newspaper?” 

To be fair, Betty admitted that the school paper doesn’t draw much of a crowd, and Jug wouldn’t expect a jock to be interested in the local comings and goings of Canterbury outside of the football season schedule. “Thanks for your help,” he glad-hands, clapping the kid on the shoulder before heading towards the chapel.

After putting a few body lengths between himself and the gang of jocks, he hears the light bulb click in the kid’s head. “Hey, aren’t you that kid we were going to kick the shit out of? You know Chuck has your fucking number!”

_Good_ , Jug thinks because he has Chuckle’s number, too, camera in hand.

He hears them start the game, giving the lower classmen a ten-minute head start to hide. A few buzz past giggling, veering off towards different sections of the school. No one chooses the chapel yet. 

He checks the film in his camera, making sure he has enough shots left. There are a few extra rolls in his jacket pocket.

When he gets to the chapel door, he notes the trail of muddy shoeprints leading up the stone steps, about the same size as his own, two sets. This is the perfect opportunity for those two twats, he thinks, and the perfect opportunity to catch them slipping up.

Suddenly a head pops up out of the shrubbery beneath him with a shriek, and he falls against the door, his camera shooting off a series of haphazard flashes.

“Oh my god, are you playing? They said we had a ten-minute head start,” the girl complains, stepping out from the foliage, picking boxwood leaves out of her hair.

“School paper,” he whispers, brandishing his camera at her. “But, you should probably find a new spot to hide. Somewhere really far away from the chapel because I bet they’re going to come here first,” he reasons, gesturing at the group of seniors still visible across the quad. But, he also needs to put as much distance as possible between her and those two dirt-bags. She is lucky he found her first.

“You promise you won’t rat me out?”

He smiles and crosses his heart with his free hand. “Scout’s honor.”

“You don’t look like a boy scout,” she assesses correctly.

“Got me,” he says with a laugh. He was a boy scout alright, just not the kind that gathered wholesome badges of self-reliance and resourcefulness and sang songs by the campfire with his fellow scouts. His mother used to call him that when she wanted him to be good, to follow orders without question. _Are you going to be a brat, Forsythe, or are you going to be my good little boy scout because let’s not forget what I do to brats_. He certainly earned his badges with that woman, with those people.

Across the quad, the countdown finishes and the hunters begin to disperse through the campus.

“I guess you’ll just have to trust me,” he says, pointing at the upperclassmen starting to filter into the nearest school building. “But, I’d run if I were you.”

With that, she darts for the athletic section of the school, and Jughead waits until she skirts the edge of the gymnasium before he slips through the open door to the chapel.

Churches set him on edge. He was baptized Catholic for which his mother never forgave his father. _I had to give him some kind of chance, Gladys, even if it ends up being total bullshit,_ he remembers his father saying during one of their particularly heated arguments, probably right before his dad packed it up and left.

His father dragged him to the occasional Christmas mass with his grandmother, and those were relatively fond memories for him. His grandmother was a good woman, if a little severe where religion was concerned, if a little too close to the bottle, but she gave young Jughead caramels before Christmas mass and cooked a spiral ham for dinner afterwards. She even let Jughead take home mountains of leftovers. But, once his father’s mother passed, the last time he found himself in a church was for her funeral. His father cried, and his mother muttered _fucking finally_ as her husband delivered his eulogy.

At the reception, while his mother piled his plate with cold cuts and potato salad, she joked meanly about the old crone. _She used to dare me to come to church just so she could watch me burn. ‘Then, he’ll see you for the witch you are.’ Well, joke’s on her, the guilt-tripping bitch. Guilt is for the lambs, Forsythe._ Before she would release his plate to him, she grabbed his chin and directed his gaze at her. _Say it, Forsythe. Guilt is for the lambs._ He did. And then, he got his food. And he never went to church again.

He found the funeral unsettling, and maybe that’s why it makes him uncomfortable to be in here now, alone, at night. He remembers his father blubbering through the eulogy, and it confused him because he didn’t think his father liked his mother very much. He recalls that after the service while he held his father’s hand and thanked people for coming, his mother remained at the front of the church near the open casket, staring at his grandmother’s dead body. He remembers watching her reach into the casket at some point, and in his child’s mind, he thought maybe his mother was showing affection for her deceased mother-in-law, a final farewell, like the other guests had done during the procession past the open casket.

Standing here in the empty church at night, he sees her so clearly at the altar, his mother in layers of black lace like spider’s webs, her gloved hand disappearing inside his grandmother’s coffin and then taking something with it, a token. Years later it would be something he watched her do, without fail, stealing away a part of them – a necklace, a ring, at one point a pacemaker she carved from the dead man’s shoulder – a fond reminder and a marker for her body count.

Then, she is gone, and all he is left with is an empty church. That word settles there – empty. Chuck and Nick aren’t here.

He stares at the altar, the large brass cross suspended above it, even smells the vestiges of incense, the musty wood of the pews, earth and meat and something metallic and dense. What? It reminds him of rabbit hunting with his father, like a wounded animal dragging itself along its well-trod trail towards supposed safety.

Another shriek echoes through the chapel, and he spins around towards the sound coming through the open door of the church – midnight manhunt, students streaking through the quad as the hunted are rounded up by the hunters. Why does it smell like hunting in the church?

The smell is closer now, wet and heavy and meatier. His finger on the camera trigger, he feels the air shift behind him, and no, he was never alone.

“I know it’s you, Chuck,” he calls, turning slowly as he raises the camera. “It was a good prank, but.”

His finger presses the shutter release like the leftover nervous twitch of a dead man’s hand, one last false cry of life, and the flash lights up the chapel, the mud-caked shrouds and the open rib cage centered at Jug’s face. He thinks he spots a heart beating inside the gnarled cage of bones that look pried open by hand, some broken, hears the panicky thudding of a hunted heart, yet maybe it’s his own as he stumbles back, landing hard on his bruised tailbone.

The pulse and click of the flash and shutter sounds again, white light washing across the shrouds, the rib cage, the massive bloody ram’s skull mounted on top as the whole creature lumbers towards him, creaking and clicking, and then Jughead sees hooves emerging from the edges of the shrouds.

_Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit_. “Good prank, Chuck,” he tries again raising his camera like a weapon, and the creature stops, the skull tilting down to aim the two dumb black holes of its eyes at the camera lens. Jughead’s finger hovers above the shutter release, waiting for it to make the first move. Scared shitless really.

He barely catches it, the slight swivel of its massive skull back and forth. _No Chuck_. _No prank._

He regains his footing at some point, his sneakers finding purchase against the stone floors as he launches himself back towards the church doors. He would have dropped and forgotten his camera had it not been looped around his neck, and he forgets he even had a camera let alone a limit to how fast he could run when he stumbles into his dorm room and slams the door behind him, flipping the deadbolt and backing away from the door.

“Jug, what the hell?” Archie exclaims, his messy rooster top poking out from under the covers. Veronica gasps, grabbing for the sheets and her underwear. “A little privacy, man?”

Jughead mutters something that might be _sorry_ or _what_ all rolled into one, hardly aware of Veronica rushing back into her clothes. She shoves him to the side to get her shirt from underneath his sneaker, and shoves him again when she sees the scuff mark on the cashmere shoulder. “Who raised you, wolves?” She shouts. “God, Archie, your roommate is a fucking spaz!”

“Ronnie, calm down. Come on, give me a moment,” Archie tries to console her while searching under the covers for his boxer shorts.

She is already slipping back into her heels, brandishes one at Jughead like she might stab him with her stiletto, but Archie grabs her wrist, backs her towards the door. “Ronnie, put down the stiletto,” he cajoles gently, guiding her towards the exit.

When his roommate reaches for the locks, the beg flood from Jughead’s mouth in a jumbled mess, only fear where there should be spaces between the words. “No, Archie, don’t open the door.”

Archie finally looks at Jughead, looking struck by lightning in the middle of their dorm room. “Jesus, Jug, did you see a ghost?”

“Did you piss your pants, Huck Finn?” Veronica jibes, dropping the stiletto and fitting it onto her dainty foot.

On autopilot, Jughead touches the front of his jeans. Dry. Then, he seems to remember himself and glares at Veronica, whom looks wholly satisfied that she got him to check, running her tongue across her teeth like she can taste the leftovers of the canary.

“Why didn’t anybody tell me about the fucking psycho in the chapel?” 


	3. hear no evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _One day you might hear someone knocking_   
>  _Loudly at your door_   
>  _And you know it must be bad news_   
>  _Absolutely sure_
> 
> Don't Harm the Messenger by Paul Kelly

After he got out of the hospital, he didn’t leave the trailer park for three weeks. He sat on the makeshift scaffolding that was his father’s porch and watched the colors fade on the decaying welcome sign, the molding sun, his fingers idly sifting through Hot Dog’s shaggy fur while his eyes traced the chipped lettering, _no pets_. Sometimes his father stood next to him and smoked a cigarette in silence before heading back inside to catch the next game in the playoffs. He couldn’t stand sitting in the stuffy trailer, the nagging never-ending rants of the announcers, sitting next to his father on the ratty yellow-velvet couch with their feet propped up on his father’s beat-up Coleman cooler. The cold felt better on his skin still raw and healing under the bandages.

He didn’t remember the drive from Ohio, and he didn’t remember much about those three weeks outside of the wooden shine of that fading particle board sign, Hot Dog nosing around in the mud beneath his dangling feet, and the occasional whiff of his father’s cigarette.

Somewhere in those three weeks he turned seventeen. He was sitting on the metal platform under the buzzing porchlight, remembers how the scaffolding shook when the group in his father’s living room all stood up at once shouting at the television when Orosco struck out Barrett, someone swearing when they lost fifty bucks, and his father grunting getting gut punched after kissing his friend Mustang on the mouth.

As the fray spilled out from the trailer and down the porch steps, slogging through the late October slurry towards the bar across the street, his father clapped him on his good shoulder and asked if he wanted to join them, to celebrate. For a moment, he thought his father meant his birthday, but then he heard his father’s friends slamming on the sides of the neighboring trailers, yelling about the Mets winning the series, and realized his father had forgotten. Jug did, too, until he heard that word, _celebrate_.

‘Come on, boy, one beer will do you good.’

‘Dad, I’m only seventeen.’ Newly seventeen, and while it didn’t register with his dad who was already six sheets to the wind, Jug remembers it feeling less like an excuse against underage drinking and more like he could no longer gauge his age, feeling more and more as the months passed that if he tore through the stitches, his insides would not match his outsides.

His father with the simple answer because he always had a knack for reducing the inner turmoil of Jughead’s teenaged existential crises down to a tired soundbite. It was an age-old adage, one that had hounded Jug since he could remember, something his own mother repeated. ‘You’re a Jones.’

He already felt chewed up, digested, and shat out, and he felt even cheaper with his father’s words boiling him down further. Yet while it frustrated Jug at the time, there was more to that simple justification.

His father followed the rest of the good ole boys to the bar, and Jughead remained on the porch wishing for the millionth time that he had not been born a sorry-ass Jones, that his entire state of being could not possibly be sealed up inside that single ignominious bottle of shitty Jones luck. He watched his dad pass the decomposing sign, that ever-optimistic sun still yellow and red consumed by black mold, the spread of his father’s palm across the back of Mustang’s jacket, the serpent striking out from the stark backdrop of black leather. His arm ached with the image of that gaping maw, phantom lightning carving along the round of his shoulder and over the blade, but he reminded himself those were not his mother’s snakes. He had to remind himself that his mother’s snakes didn’t – wouldn’t exist anymore.

Waking up in a St. Charles hospital bed to his father dozing off in a plastic-backed seat, looking grizzled from pulling an all-nighter on the road between New York and Ohio, Jughead knew she was gone.

‘Hey, kid.’ The first words out of his mouth from the man he hadn’t seen in nearly three years, yet there was something strangely comforting about that same leather jacket squeaking against the plastic hospital chair as he stretched from bad sleep, scratching at his perpetual five o’clock shadow. 

‘Where is she?’

His father, smelling like alcoholic’s aftershave, patted his pockets for a pack of cigarettes. When he couldn’t find them, he sat forward. ‘Your mom is sick, Jug. And she’s in a lot of trouble.’ FP Jones reached for his hand, and Jughead noticed the barest tremble in hesitation as his father’s hand searched for a safe place to land amongst the various tubes and wires plugged into his son.

When his dad told him they picked her up in a motel outside of Detroit, that she was getting ready to cross into Canada with forged papers, he closed his eyes. When his father admitted that she planned on leaving Jughead behind, he tried to forget how to cry.

For the first few weeks, Jughead would not believe him. He told himself she had a plan in place. She always did. And he built the story up in his head, privately, while he played cribbage with his dad between surgeries. She would cross into Canada first, lock down a place for the two of them, and then she would send for him. She wouldn’t leave him behind. He was too important to her. She always said so. This whole arrest business was part of some bigger play. And she would forgive him. Maybe that’s all this was, just a little time for her to forgive him.

Then, they started pulling bodies out of Magee Marsh.

Right before his second surgery, a federal agent showed up at the foot his hospital bed with a badge and a tape recorder. The agent went through the motions of apologizing to Jughead for requesting an initial statement under the circumstances, but Jug couldn’t stop looking at that badge. He even asked if he could hold it, just to know, thinking maybe if he held it in his hands, the _circumstances_ would feel less like a trial his mother had designed to test him. Seeing the badge up close, the fantasy he had built up inside his mind fragmented all at once.

‘I’ll answer your questions,’ he consented, handing the man his badge. ‘If you could answer one for me.’ The night he was found, whether anybody had called it in, even anonymously.

‘You were found in the woods by Magee Marsh by a fisherman at approximately four in the morning, Mr. Jones,’ the agent replied, parroting what the policemen and his own father had told him. ‘No one phoned it in. You were lucky the guy found you when he did.’

He laughed, so bitter and short that it was more a stilted sigh than anything else. 'Lucky.'

While the agent asked his questions, Jughead tried to ignore his father propped up against the bathroom door. Arms crossed, his father studied the federal agent from the shoulders of his clean-cut suit jacket to the perfect Windsor nestled below his clean-shaven Adam’s and all the way down to the Waterman pen scratching away next to the rolling tape recorder. Even Jughead could hear it in the back of his head. _Don’t trust anyone with a badge_. He could hear it even as he spilled all his mother’s big bad uglies.

His father was dying to call the man a Reaganite spook and send him packing, but even FP Jones knew there was only one way he was going to be rid of his ex-wife. _Get the bitch good and gone_ , he had reasoned with Jughead right before he let the federal agent back into his son’s hospital room. It had to start and it would end with every Jones’s worst nightmare – a badge.

His father listened without comment, and if he was surprised by some of what Jughead disclosed to Agent Adams, he didn’t say it. Yet, the line of his father’s mouth reminded Jug of the handlebars on his bicycle when the bolts came loose, and that was how he felt in that moment, like all the bolts had come loose in his life, the steerage slipping from his hands, and then his father there in the corner telling him with a sigh of resignation and a glimmer of regret in his eye to just _steer into the skid, boy_.

Weird now that it feels so much like a security blanket. _You’re a Jones_. He grew up early, and he grew up fast. The tenets of their life, their legacy, demanded it. _You’re a Jones. You deal. This is just par for the course, kid_.

So, he deals.

For all intents and purposes, he was lucky. He survived Gladys Jones, Toledo’s drug queen-pin, leader of the Ohio Serpents, and the snake witch of the Erie. Not many could claim the same.

* * *

“All of this is really great, Jug, but I’m still not sure about this last part, about the hazing rituals. We haven’t had problems with that in years, so I think you should write it like that, that the school and its students have put preventative measures in place to make sure something like that never happens again.” She drops his edited draft on his desktop and returns to her own.

He barely glances at the bleeding state of his work as he scoops it into his book-bag. “Are you saying that because you really believe it or because it will look good for your brother?”

She feigns insult, shell pink nails clutching at imaginary pearls, and it is supremely adorable. “Are you accusing me of nepotism, Mr. Jones?”

He drops the flap of his messenger bag closed. “If it walks like a duck, Ms. Cooper.”

Betty caps her red pen and lines it up with the rest on her desktop. “And your evidence is what, Jug, a few blurry photographs and some mud in the chapel?” She sifts through the negatives and photos he developed yesterday and delivered on her desk for approval.

“I know what I saw, Betty, and I’m betting that creep was probably aiming to scare the shit out of some unlucky freshmen or worse.” He is still convinced Chuck and Nick are involved somehow. 

She compares two group shots of her brother and cousin with a company of underclassmen, debating which one should get her hard-earned stamp of approval. “It was the middle of the night, Jughead, and you were alone. There are a bunch of statues in that church.” She is quiet on the next part, her green gaze flickering up at him momentarily before fluttering back to the images on her desk. “You know, it’s okay to admit maybe you were a little scared. It was dark, late. I’m not going to make fun of you.”

“Do I really look like I’m scared of the dark, Betts?”

She rolls her eyes, and he turns to the discard pile at the corner of her desk. “Jesus, does Chic ever smile?”

“He’s not known for it,” Betty corroborates, scooping up the discard pile and slapping him on the chest with her hard-edged veto. Jughead catches them against his chest with one hand and grants her a sarcastic smile. Her returned one is a more well-practiced plastic.

He peels the photos off his chest to see which ones his hard-to-please taskmaster has condemned. “Weird.”

“What?”

“Your cousin’s eyes,” he notes, showing her one of the group shots, Chic’s head balanced above a gaggle of freshman girls, looking almost phantom-like above their smiling faces. “One of them looks different. Everyone else has red-eye, but his left one looks dull.”

She peeks at the photo as if to double-check. “That’s because it’s fake.”

“He has a fake eye?”

“Yeah, he lost it freshman year.”

“How?”

“Funny you should ask. A hazing ritual gone bad,” she explains easily, shuffling through her notes on the memorial for Jason Blossom. “Because of that, we didn’t have a midnight manhunt when I was a freshman, but Charles and Chic commissioned the administration to bring it back if they could be security, make sure what happened to Chic never happened to anyone else ever again. Other seniors volunteered, too.”

He glances at the photo again, back up at Betty with a sheepish smile. “I didn’t know that.”

She raises her eyebrows at him and turns back to her notes. “You’d know that if you’d done the proper legwork. If you want to include something about hazing, include that, Jughead. That’s proven. There’s documentation on that, and it’s better than your fuzzy photo of Bigfoot.”

Fair enough. He earned that one, but, “You wound me, boss.”

“You’re tough, Juggie.”

Something jolts in his gut every time she tosses a nickname his way, and while it feels a little like she is tossing a treat to a dog, he nips eagerly at each one.

“Okay, okay, no mentioning the demonic half-ram half-man that lives beneath the church,” he concedes, already knowing he will be back in the darkroom tonight trying to resolve those negatives. He hasn’t had an episode in over six months. He damn well knows what he saw. “And, I’ll get a few more quotes out of your cousin, but other than that, when are we putting out the first issue, boss?”

She smiles small without looking at him, twirling her purple pen between her fingers. “You finish your story first, Jones, then we’ll talk layout. Besides, I can’t really finish mine until homecoming, so take a breather, Bernstein.”

He nods and takes a seat on her desktop, tapping her red pen to the beat of _INXS’s Devil Inside_. “You going home for the holiday?”

She opens her mouth to answer when his roommate’s rooster top pops through the office door. “You’re both still here? You know the dining hall closes in fifteen minutes, Jug.”

Jughead curses, scrambling for his notebooks and stuffing them into his book-bag.

“You gave the rest of us a fighting chance, Arch,” Betty quips, and when Jughead glares at her, she flips a paperclip at him, clipping him square in the forehead. “I know it was you cleared out the chocolate pudding last night.”

“You know I was going to say time flies when you’re having fun, but now,” he trails off, flicking the paperclip back at her, and it glances off her right ear.

“Glutton.”

“Hard-ass.”

Betty purses her lips at him, and then tears her gaze away towards her best friend floating unsure in the doorway. Her ponytail whips towards him, and Jug wants to wrap it up in his hand and tug her eyes back to him. “What are you doing here, Arch?”

Archie seems lost for a moment, and Jug wonders if he is unused to playing third wheel. “Um, I came to warn Jughead about dinner, and yeah, right, I remember now,” he starts, and Jughead can almost literally see the lightbulb flash behind his pup-brown eyes. “Betty, are you going home for Labor Day?”

Betty scoffs. “Alice insists.”

“Well, I was wondering if you wanted to catch a ride with me and Veronica,” Archie offers, and Jughead watches something flicker across Betty’s face when he mentions his girlfriend, maybe apprehension. He is still learning her mannerisms, their idiosyncrasies. “So you don’t have to take the train,” Archie finishes.

“Are you sure Veronica is okay with that, Archie?”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

Betty’s glances at Jughead, as if weighing whether or not to keep talking in front of him. “Because she didn’t ask me, Arch.”

“Maybe she hasn’t had the chance yet,” Archie excuses easily. Jughead wonders sometimes how his roommate can be so charmingly dense. Better yet, how he can get away with being so dumb yet endearing. “Come on, Betts, just ride with us.”

Jughead has spent a good chunk of time ruminating on the strange social dynamics of the Canterbury elite, especially where Betty and her fellow despots were concerned because damn if he cannot stop his eyes wandering towards her whenever she is within fifty feet of him. Witnessing this exchange, he realizes he cannot recall seeing Betty and Veronica and Archie together in one spot for longer than a beat and a half, nothing more than a passing remark before Betty shuffled off to let the couple make out in the hallway before chemistry or Archie ditched the two girls for football practice. He thinks now that if the trio couldn’t handle more than five minutes together on an average day, what would it be like stuck together for three-hours in the back of a town car.

Yet, Archie looks so sincere, and Jug can see the walls crumbling around her, his hard-nosed editor-in-chief. He has not been able to pinpoint a foolproof weak spot in the enigma that is Betty Cooper, but he would hedge his bets Archie Andrews comes close. With Jug, she plays her cards close to her chest, but if Archie asks for a hand, she folds. She won’t even play. And she doesn’t now, turning her gaze up to her oldest friend and nodding, conceding. “Sure, Archie, thanks.”

Archie smiles his thousand-watt, golden boy smile, the kind that melts all the girls, and Jughead feels a small glimmer of envy watching Betty smile back with not a little fondness. “Great, great, Betty. It’ll be fun. It’ll be just like old times.”

At least she plays a hand with him, and if he is being honest, he prefers her pushback. It means she is there. She is participating. With Archie, he can see her bowing out, shutting down. She lets herself get pushed over, by Archie, by Veronica and Cheryl and her brother and her mother, too, probably. She doesn’t let Jughead push her over. Maybe that could be a win in his book, if he looks at it from the right angle.

His roommate disappears from the doorway, reminding Jughead he has barely ten minutes to commandeer the last pork chop, and suddenly Jug doesn’t feel hungry anymore. He feels ravenous, half-starved, watching Betty dejectedly capping and recapping her purple pen.

“You coming, Cooper?” Jug wonders, shifting his book-bag higher on his shoulder, feeling unbalanced.

She rolls her red pen under her index finger and smiles softly, almost sadly, shaking her head. “No, I’m not hungry, but save me a pudding?”

He gives her a two-fingered salute. “Sure, boss.” 

* * *

Without the students, he pretends he lives in the ruins of humanity, and it suits him. He used to play the same kind of make-believe on that property in Oak Harbor, imagining there were no people, that he and his mother were the last.

He would lie in the fallow hay fields, tunneled in by the grasses until all that was left was the wide expanse of hazy blue and the tangles of hay and the silt beneath his hands, and like that, he could believe there were no people, no need for pretense.

When he was thirteen, he dressed up as a werewolf for Halloween and spent the night toilet-papering a string of expensive-looking houses in Bowling Green with some kids who hung around his mother’s chop shop. He sweat like crazy in that costume, perspiration streaming under the thick rubber mask, and he was surprised the taped-on fur held to his scrawny, hairless arms. Halloween was about playing pretend, but he felt he was playacting more at being a stupid teenage boy with those other kids than he was just letting himself be one of those stupid kids. When he got home, his mother ripped the fur off his arms, leaving behind raw, smooth-faced skin. _Grow up, Forsythe_.

Damp and sweaty now, he leans against the ivy-choked brick walls of the library and smokes a cigarette without having to worry about anyone happening by to catch him. The humidity clings to this place, and he wonders if it is the confluence of the rivers exacerbated by the Indian summer heat. He lets himself settle into the vines, lets his arm get tangled up in the shoots and leaves as he edges his hand along the cool brick, letting nature swallow him up. Dropping pretense feels like shedding that heavy, fur-laden werewolf costume. It always feels like that now.

He misses laying in those hayfields, concealed beneath the grass-line so his mother couldn’t find him. No need for pretense, no need to be a stupid kid or act the adult. He could believe the world was gone, so why pretend.

He is researching the history of hazing rituals at Canterbury, especially with respect to the midnight manhunt tradition, hoping to flesh out his article, maybe hoping to impress Betty with something more substantial than a fluff piece on a glorified version of hide-and-seek.

He doesn’t think he feels that way with her, with Betty, that he is pretending, but maybe it is because there is enough time and distance between the person he is now and that boy in that house near Oak Harbor. He has spent so much effort trying to forget the kid who slept with reptiles and hocked stolen car parts and pushed weed at the Sundance Kid drive-in. There was so much dissonance between that kid and the one who liked writing for the _Red and Black_ with Toni and sneaking cigarettes with Sweet Pea behind the gym before basketball practice.

He holds the lit end of his cigarette over the fleshy underside of his forearm just below where the scar ends. The cherry inches closer, but he doesn’t feel the heat. He doesn’t feel anything when the end of the witch’s tit kisses his skin, but senses a subtle pressure and hears the faint sizzle. Replacing the cigarette between his teeth, he inspects his forearm, studies the small black circle of ash and singed skin, and feels nothing as he licks his thumb, smudges away the ash. The doctors said he might regain some sensation in his arm over time, but the key word there had always been _might_.

_Not that much distance between us, Forsythe_ , his mother whispers to him. _Impossible._

“Hey, the door is open,” someone calls from behind a wall of boxwoods, and he spots a dark head poke through the hedge-line, wriggling the rest of his body through the narrow space between two shrubs. He readjusts his glasses when he notices Jughead leaning against the wall next to the propped open door to the library. A blonde kid comes spilling out of the hedges a moment later, having a harder go at wrestling his gangly body through the same tight space.

“You know you can always use the front door,” Jughead informs them, dropping his cigarette in the grass. It sizzles in the dew until he snuffs the ember beneath the toe of his sneaker.

“Too many eyes,” says the kid with the mission control glasses, the one with surprisingly good taste in music. Jug shares a few classes with him, knows he is only a sophomore but takes junior-level honors English and trigonometry, a genuine egghead.

“What’s with the box?” Jughead gestures at said box cradled in the boy’s arms like he holds something fragile, like an infant.

The blonde kid pipes up, “We’re playing G&G.” The kid with glasses elbows him in the side. The two make an odd pair with the blonde at least a head and a half taller than the other.

“Don’t tell anyone you saw us here.” It sounds like a threat, and Jughead nearly laughs at the kid with glasses but instead nods mock serious.

“You let me play, and your secret is safe with me,” Jug bargains. “Cross my heart.”

When the kid looks up at him, the shine catches on his lenses, and Jug cannot see his eyes. The unamused line of his mouth lets Jughead know the kid will never buy what he is selling. “You don’t look like you’d be into roleplaying games, Jones.”

Now Jug feels a little bad he doesn’t know the kid’s name. “I have layers.” He swings open the side door and toes aside the brick he used to prop it open. “And, I’ve got knives in my eyes. I need a break.”

The stolid line of his mouth curls up into a smirk. It almost looks drawn on with a black magic marker. “Sure, Jones, we’ll entertain you.”

He lets the two boys lead him back into the library, stopping briefly at his table to gather his mess of notes and research materials into his book-bag.

“What are you working on?” The blonde kid asks in passing, flipping the cover over on a Canterbury yearbook to check the year embossed in gold.

Jughead closes it the rest of the way and stuffs it into his bag. “A story for the _Blue and Gold_.”

The kid with glasses snorts. “Print journalism is a dying profession. Besides, I thought you wrote fiction.”

“What gave you that idea?”

The glint of his birth control glasses is more than off-putting. He doesn’t answer the question, instead responding with, “This game is more fun when you have an imagination, something sorely lacking in our peers, right, Jones?”

“This is going to make me sound like a dick, but what’s your name again?”

“Ben Button,” the blonde kid offers first. When the kid with glasses doesn’t say anything, looking mildly peeved, he fills in for Jughead, pointing at his friend. “Dilton Doiley.” 

“That’s Game Master Doiley now, Jones,” Dilton snaps back. “From here on out.”

“Right.” Jughead bows his head slightly in false deference. “Game Master Doiley.”

“Come on, Dilton, I bet they’re already waiting for us,” Ben urges, moving away from the row of study tables towards the stacks.

Dilton presses his glasses up the bridge of his nose to settle more firmly between his eyes. He gathers the game box closer to his body, and Jughead can see it is hand-painted, red and gold filigree on a black background, a gold gryphon and a red gargoyle with a snake slung across both their mouths, like some sick tug of war. The gargoyle’s horns eerily resemble the horns of a ram.

He follows the boys into the stacks, past the school’s archives where he just spent the last two hours, past the rows of outdated textbooks and microfiche readers, and further down a narrow hallway lined with books in unfamiliar languages. When they lead him around a forgotten corner, he wonders aloud, “Why so secretive?”

Dilton ignores him.

Ben looks back and shrugs.

When they round the corner, Jughead almost expects, with how far they have gone, to end up back outside, but instead finds two other guys seated at a table in a small alcove.

Jughead hears Dilton curse under his breath at the same time one of the guys at the table flips open a Zippo, striking the flint as he acknowledges the newly arrived. “Doiley. Button,” he starts, lighting a candle. “New blood.”

Ben touches Dilton’s shoulder, sympathy in his little boy blue eyes, maybe a small plea for forgiveness, but it is hard to see in the dim. Harder still when Dilton shrugs out from under his hand and yanks a chair back. “This is Jughead Jones.”

The kid with the Zippo lights the rest of the candles, and then flips it closed with a tinny clink. “Jones, the new kid,” he notes, mulling over this information. “The scholarship kid. A novelty.” The light seems to drive his cheekbones higher on his face, makes his thin-lipped smile more impish, eyes beadier and blacker. “Kurtz, alchemist.” Jughead wonders if he can form complete sentences.

Dilton opens the hand-painted box, almost tenderly, carefully laying its contents on the tabletop. “Have you played before?” He places a small wooden cradle in the center of the table beside the candles, various die lined up in its slot.

Jughead shakes his head, takes a seat opposite Kurtz next to the other kid. “Just Kurtz? Like Sting?”

Kurtz chuckles at that, and then Dilton spoils his fun. “Jonathon.”

“You know that’s what makes you a shitty game master, Doiley,” Kurtz charges. “No mystery.”

The other kid finally interjects, hoping to diffuse some of the tension. “Trevor. Brown, if that matters.” He even offers Jughead his hand to shake. Jughead recognizes him as one of the peons at Chuck’s jock table, probably a younger recruit, junior varsity maybe with that baby face. “First time?” This doesn’t seem like his scene either, but Archie did mention some of the guys from the team played.

“Yeah.” Jughead accepts his hand, shakes it firmly once before waving his hands at the candles. “Mood lighting?”

Kurtz leans across the table to play with one of the candles, bare fingers licked by flame, shark eyes betraying no pain. “Puts me in the mood, yeah, Doiley?”

Dilton ignores him and sets up the quest cards. “I picked out the upper level cards since this is your first time,” he explains, placing the small stack closer to Jughead. “First though, you have to build your character.” He produces a second grouping of cards and fans them out in his hand, showing Jughead the classes. “Choose wisely, though. You cannot change your fate once it is chosen.”

“Can I know what everyone else is first? I want to make an informed decision. And you know, conceptual symmetry.” Jughead glances around the table for approval.

Kurtz slouches back into his chair. “I opened with mine.”

Button offers his next. “Shadow Walker.”

“Healer,” Trevor pipes up.

“Arcane Ranger and Game Master,” Dilton finishes, still holding the hand of character classes toward Jughead.

Kurtz scoffs. “Why is it, Doiley, that you always get to be Game Master?”

Doiley continues to try and ignore him, gesturing the cards at Jughead.

“I’m probably not the only one,” Kurtz continues. “Thinking maybe we need to change things up a bit, let someone else have a go for once.”

Doiley drops the hand. “We let you try once, Jonathon. You’re not the fairest arbiter.”

“Fair.” A heated burst of air, like a curse word. “Life’s not fair, Doiley.”

“We can put it to a vote again, if you’d like, Jonathon.”

Jughead looks around the table, noting Ben and Trevor shifting uncomfortably in their seats while Kurtz’s eyes glide across the table like a searchlight in a prison yard, landing on Jughead through the flames. Jug can barely see the anger-shame rising high on his cheeks, but it might just be the lighting.

“Come on, Kurtz, Dilton already wrote the campaign,” Ben reasons gently. 

“Whatever. Choose your fate, Jones.”

Dilton raises the cards to Jughead, fans them out further. Jughead barely looks when he plucks one from the hand, flips it towards him to read the label. “Hellcaster.”

“Well chosen, Jones,” Dilton commends, replacing the character cards in the box. “You regularly communion with the legions of Hell and can summon them at will to do your bidding. In addition to these abilities, you have the potential to enter pacts with conjured demons, gaining their powers for a duration dependent upon your skill level. However, you are just a fledgling caster with only a novice understanding of calling the forces of evil; therefore, your rapport with the rulers of Hell must be earned, hellcaster. But, you were born bound to your namesake demon. Roll the dice to choose your fated demon.”

“Which die?”

Doiley hands him the ten-sided die. “There are ten possibilities for a beginner hellcaster.”

Jughead tosses the die back onto the tabletop. It rebounds off one of the candles and lands in front of Trevor who calls out the number. “Seven.”

Dilton consults his notes, index finger landing on Jughead’s _fated demon._ “Severin, an acolyte of the Leviathan and cousin to the Gargoyle King.”

Jug feels his pulse jump at the name and reaches up to scratch the sweaty hair at the nape of his neck.

“A lower caste demon but still nothing to sneer at. You have a small number of spells bestowed upon you by your familiar, including entangle, speaks with reptiles, and envenomation. The power of these spells is dependent upon your skill level. As you complete quests, your skill level increases, including your rapport with the legions of hell as your reputation improves,” Dilton explains calmly, peering at Jughead over the edge of his folder.

“You read my short story didn’t you?” Jughead states with a sigh, sagging into his chair.

“Are you questioning my neutrality, hellcaster?” Dilton sits up straighter. “The demon chose you, Jones. As game master, I am merely the messenger of fate, not the controller.” Kurtz scoffs at that, and Dilton closes his eyes, repressing the urge to snap back. “You cannot change your fate, hellcaster.”

“Yeah, Jones, accept your demons,” Kurtz cuts in, making a swipe for the cradle of die. “So, what’s the quest, game master? Let’s get this party started.”

Dilton is quicker, sliding the cradle towards him. “I have to modify it to accommodate Hellcaster Jones. We cannot expect a level one spell-caster to keep up.” Kurtz groans and cranes his head over the seatback.

“You know, if it’s okay, I could sit this one out and just observe. That way I don’t interrupt anything, if you all had plans or goals for today’s, um, campaign. I’ll learn, and then I’ll play next time,” Jughead offers. He would prefer to watch anyway. To be honest, he is really only interested in the gargoyle painted on Dilton Doiley’s game box.

Trevor smiles at Jughead. “I’m okay with that.”

Ben agrees, too, and then Kurtz starts snapping his fingers at Doiley. “Come on, game master, we’ve all agreed that Jones sits this one out. Let’s get the lead out.”

Doiley sucks his teeth, and then nods, sliding the cradle back to the center of the table. “If you have questions, Jones, feel free to ask them.” He puts away his character-building notes and brings out the evening’s quest. “Today, you hunt for the Key to Ascension.”

Jughead thinks it might be the fire-light in everyone’s eyes, but the near-ravenous, manic shine that bleeds into their eyes spreads across the players like a contagion. Something unsettling starts twisting in his gut, like he swallowed a snake, because he has seen that look before, when _she_ pried that book from the dead man’s hands. “What’s the purpose of this game again?”

“It is a role-playing game, Jones,” Doiley responds as if he has already answered this question a dozen times.

“Yeah, but what is the point?”

“To _ascend_ , hellcaster,” Kurtz interjects, slamming his hands on the table and leaning across the flames towards Jug.

“To become King,” Trevor adds, his tone less zealous but his gaze still lit with hunger.

“To become God,” Doiley finishes. “In a way.”

“So, it’s a king-of-the-hill type situation,” Jughead asks for clarification, summarizing for his own brain to comprehend.

“Sure.” Doiley reaches for his box and pulls out a small pamphlet. “Here’s a beginner’s guide to the rules of the game. Each game begins with a campaign. The campaigns are provided with the game itself along with the quests, but they are more outlines, and it is the game master’s job to flesh them out, add in the details. Each campaign is made up of quests that are designed to get the players to accomplish a larger task, the point of the campaign. This one is to win the Key to Ascension. It is a higher level campaign, only meant for levels fifteen and above, but even a level fifteen would have a difficult time completing even half the quests of this campaign.”

“I’m a level fifteen,” Trevor chimes in, and Kurtz smiles at him like he is dinner.

“Who made up this game? Who wrote the campaigns?”

Kurtz sighs. “Are you serious? Do you live under a rock?”

“No one knows,” Ben answers. “That’s kind of the biggest mystery behind this game.”

“Why is it called Gryphons and Gargoyles?”

Kurtz gives him a look like he cannot believe he has to listen to some rube’s questions and, worse, listen to others entertain them. “I thought scholarship students were supposed to be the smart ones.” He picks up the twelve-sided die and shows it to Jughead, the only die with alternating black and white faces. “Good and evil, hellcaster. At the heart of everything is a battle between good and evil, and the Ascension is to either or. You make that choice at the end.”

“Has anyone ever won the game?”

Kurtz replaces the die in its cradle, nestled with the others. “Not that we know of.”

“It’s an old game. I bet someone has won at least once,” Trevor supposes.

“How do you get the campaigns? Did they all come with the game?”

Dilton decides to bite at that one. “Some did, but new ones still come out. You can pick them up at the hobbies and games store in town.” Dilton shows him a few other pamphlets in the box. “But sometimes.” He pauses, shuffling them back into the box and closing it.

“Sometimes,” Jughead prompts.

“Sometimes I’ve gotten them from other places.”

“Other game masters?”

“No,” Dilton starts then adds. “Yeah, a few other game masters will exchange rare campaigns for others, but no. I’ve gotten a few in my locker.”

“Probably from other game masters,” Ben submits, as if this is not the first time he has comforted Dilton with this explanation.

He shares a look with Kurtz, who appears to corroborate Ben’s reasoning. “I’ve gotten some, too. Some game masters like to be – I don’t know, secretive. Mysterious. They think it adds to the intrigue of the game. And game masters like to make up their own campaigns. We’re all control freaks.”

Trevor adds, “You can add or take away what you want. You can build on the game as much as your imagination allows. I think that’s what makes this game so fun.”

Dilton shakes his head. “Yeah, but some of the campaigns I’ve gotten have been.” He tries to find the right word. “They’re out there.”

“He means they go off board,” Kurtz clarifies. “It’s why I don’t always play with these squares, but it’s the break. I usually play with another company.”

“What do you mean off board?”

Dilton sighs, growing tired of Jughead’s questions.

“Boys, the library closes in ten minutes.”

Dilton slams the game master’s folder down and starts tossing the rest of the game pieces back into the box. Kurtz is on his feet blowing out the candles. Jughead glances behind him to see Edgar Evernever standing at the entrance to the alcove. He switches the lights on, illuminating the rest of the space, and suddenly the small alcove feels even smaller.

“Sorry, Mr. Evernever,” Trevor says sheepishly, pushing in his chair. He skirts around the counselor with a subdued goodbye to the rest.

“We’ll play some other time, yeah, Jones?” Kurtz suggests, stacking the candles under his arm. “Maybe you can come play with my crew. I promise we’re a lot more exciting than these buzzkills.” He turns towards Evernever and bows short and stiff. “My liege.”

“Curfew, Mr. Kurtz,” Evernever reminds him, stepping aside to let the kid pass.

Jughead asks offhand if the librarian is still at the circulation desk, hoping to check out some books for his article, and when Evernever turns his gaze on him, Jughead gets the odd feeling the good counselor might be pissed at him, or pissed at himself. Maybe pissed at Kurtz. He kind of hopes Evernever is pissed at Kurtz.

The good counselor is cold but polite when he tells Jug that, “Miss Haggly will be at her post until the library closes, Mr. Jones, but I suggest you hurry.”

Ben and Dilton follow Jug back toward the stacks. Glancing behind him, Jughead notices Edgar doesn’t leave with them, instead watching them go with that same calculating look, vexing and vexed. While Ben and Dilton wait with him at the circulation desk, the ancient Miss Haggly muddling through his selections, Jughead looks back at the stacks waiting for Evernever to come out the way he must have come.

“Can I ask you two a strange question?”

“More questions, Jones,” Dilton groans.

“I’m doing a story on the midnight manhunt and hazing rituals,” Jughead explains quickly. “I just – I saw something the night of the manhunt, in the church. It looked – it looked like that thing.” He points at the red gargoyle on Dilton’s box. “Have you ever seen something like that before around here?”

Dilton tilts the box towards him to look at the gargoyle, horns and hooves like a ram’s. “Like I told you, Jones, some players like to go off board.”

* * *

The rest of the weekend passes without incident. He doesn’t see Dilton or Ben or even the odd duck Jonathon Kurtz, but he passes Trevor Brown in the dining hall on Monday. Trevor smiles at him politely but without any verbal acknowledgement. Jug gets it when Trevor sits with the rest of the jocks who have returned early from their holiday break.

He chooses to focus on finishing his story for the midnight manhunt article, hoping to impress his editor with a polished draft ahead of schedule come Tuesday when she gets back.

In his research, he uncovered a handful of other tragedies similar to the incident that occurred with Chic Cooper his freshman year. They were almost all lowerclassmen unlucky enough to get caught at the shit end of a hazing gone tits up. He even digs up an article from the town newspaper detailing the death of a sophomore nearly twenty years ago. It was ruled an accident, but two students were expelled. Even more curious, the death took place in the church.

In his mind, he believes this background information will round out the story, give the midnight manhunt tradition and the addition of student security more context, more substance, but something tells him Betty will probably want to curb the murder bit.

He spends Monday morning in the darkroom attempting to resolve the photos taken in the church, but he doesn’t get anything more than the suggestion of a twisted rib cage and what might be a partial horn from the ram’s skull. Even under the enlarger with the microscope, all the images remain grainy and smudged. Maybe if he had a better flash, he thinks, tossing the junk images into the trash.

Sighing, he decides to exclude the part about the boogeyman in the church. It feels so much like defat, too much like defeat even though it will make Betty happy.

Monday afternoon, he heads for the _Blue and Gold_ to type out his final draft, and it there is finds his editor-in-chief ahead of schedule herself.

“Well, hey there, stranger,” he greets, hopefully warmly, as he closes the door behind him, snuffing out the smell of Dr. Benzene’s chemical preparations, the crackle and pop of hot magnesium. “Couldn’t stay away, could you?”

Then, he hears it. A sniffle. Turning away from him, she grabs a handkerchief out of her bag to wipe her face. “Jug,” she acknowledges, tinge of surprise in her watery tone. She sniffles again, a quick laugh that sounds damp on the end. “What are you doing here?”

“Trying to finish my story before my editor chews my ass come Tuesday,” he explains, taking a seat at his own desk.

She ducks her head, swiping under her eyes with the handkerchief. It comes away with dark streaks, but he can see in profile that she was – is crying. “I’m sure it is coming together beautifully,” she assures him, dabbing her eyes again.

“You came back early,” he states, the unsaid question settling in the space between them.

She drops her hands in her lap. The restless movement of her arms suggests she cannot help wringing the handkerchief, glancing at him sidelong. “Yeah, I caught the train.”

“Didn’t catch a ride with Arch and his harpy?” He winces on that. “Sorry, your friend.”

She laughs but it ends again on a sad note. “It’s not her fault.”

“What, that she’s a shrew?”

She finally turns to look at him, and her eyes are a watered-down blue. Something hot and leaden drops into his gut. “No, not that. I mean, yes, Veronica can be difficult, I know.”

“You mean about Archie?”

“You know?” She looks embarrassed, and he wants to say she shouldn’t be. He has been there. He lived there for years.

And, he had his suspicions out of the starting gate. He remembers something Nick St. Claire said the night of Cheryl’s party, and yeah it stuck along with the other hints he caught over the past couple weeks. Pretty much everything sticks to the vault of Jughead Jones’s mind, he nearly informs her, but she wouldn’t remember. She doesn’t know what Nick St. Claire said, the colors he painted of Betty Cooper before Jughead even knew who or what a Betty Cooper was. Yet over time, Nick’s colors have faded. Many of the colors the general study body has painted of Betty Cooper do not match the impression she has painted on her own, maybe just for him, only in here.

She nods, understanding his silence. “It’s not her fault. It’s not even Archie’s. It just is, but sometimes she can be so.” She groans, wringing the handkerchief with more fervor. “We’re best friends. We’ve always been best friends, and yet, I’ll get over it eventually. I’m nearly there. It’s just going to take some time to get back to normal. This is just Archie being Archie, trying to force it, and Veronica being Veronica.” She glances at him, looks away like she is ashamed. “Sorry. Baggage.” 

“It’s okay, you can talk to me,” he offers, reaching up and removing his beanie to run his hand through his hair. Her eyes go wide, and he almost sees them turn back to green. “I have hair,” he says jokingly.

“You have all of it,” she points out, sounding surprised. When he gives her a questioning look, she giggles, and it tickles in the center of his chest. “Veronica had a bet going that you had some weird bald spot under there, even though Archie promised you had a full head of hair. He would know, unless you literally wear that thing all the time, even in the shower.”

He tilts his head towards her across the desk, offering up his crown, his real crown. “You can touch it. It’s real.”

“Not a wig?” She wonders, tongue-in-cheek, but she reaches across the desktops. He cannot see it, but he feels her fingers gliding across his scalp, and goosebumps flare up along the back of his neck and down his shoulder blades. He closes his eyes with the sensation and sees all her colors. “It’s soft,” she notes, as if she didn’t expect it.

“You can tell Veronica that, too.” He sits back in his chair, goes to replace his beanie when her face falls. “What?”

“Don’t put it back on just yet.” So, he doesn’t, dropping his beanie onto the desktop, waiting for permission. “I almost want to take a picture.”

“Oh no, Ms. Cooper, this is just for your eyes alone.”

He fishes his notes and previous drafts out of his book-bag. “While you were off on _holiday_ , I slaved all weekend to finish this story, Ms. Cooper. I hope you’ll be pleased.”

She finally smiles, a smidge shy of genuine, and when he flips the top open on the typewriter, he can fully authenticate her grin. “Can I admit something to you?”

“Like I said, you can talk to me. I’m an open book, boss.” He starts to feed a blank sheet of paper into the platen.

“You can’t make fun of me.”

“Cross my heart.” He even makes the motion over his chest just to see her smile again.

She does, but she speaks softly, “I think now that you’re here, this paper can actually be something good, even great.”

She has blown on the ember of his pride, the ember of other things, but he doesn’t get it. “Is this the shameful part?”

“I wanted this paper to be something people wanted to read. I really did, but I – I don’t know, I feel like I didn’t try hard enough.”

He jabs the tab key to start a new paragraph. “Your peers aren’t exactly supportive.”

She bobs her head back and forth, her habit of agreeing with him but not quite liking that she does. “I just – I wish I was stronger. I admire that about you. You don’t care what anyone thinks of you. I wish I could be like that.”

He feels the corners of his mouth curl upward for a brief moment, but the smile sours with the next thought. “I wouldn’t make fun of you for something like that.”

“Why not?” Everyone else she knows would.

He cannot know what the stakes are like for her, but for him, the front he had to put up at home was always a dark reflection of the one he wore at school, and his mother would never accept anything less. His facades were always so important to her. _We wear as many faces as we have to, Forsythe_. _That’s how we win_.

He pushes out from his desk. She murmurs his name, confused, more so when he rounds his desk to join her side, taking a seat next on the drafting stool next to her. “I don’t think you’re like that with me,” he assumes, probably stupidly. “I don’t think you’re pretending to be someone else.”

She sounds a little breathless when she admits that she doesn’t think so either, and he hears it though she doesn’t say it, that it surprises her. It surprises him, too.

When he looks her square in the eye, debating with himself, fighting with himself, she laughs self-consciously, leaning away from him. “Why are you getting so serious?”

“Because I’m about to show you another face,” he whispers, wondering if he just thought it instead of saying it aloud, but realizes he must have when her expression starts to mirror his own. He promised himself, months after he was released from the hospital, when he finally left the trailer park, when he made the decision to write that story, that he would never hide his faces. And he would never wear his mother’s again. It never served him well when he did. “And.”

“And?” Betty prompts, smiling again to diffuse some of the tension, and then it snaps, the smile like a snare that has his lips on hers.

He is barely aware of his hands braced along her neck, his thumbs pressed into her jawline to tilt her mouth up for a better angle, only that her lips are as soft as they look, that he can taste the remnants of her peach gloss, that she smells faintly of perfume at the end of a long day, vestiges of geraniums and bergamot. His heart thuds painfully in his chest as his mouth searches for more pressure, briefly capturing her bottom lip between his own, and it feels as if every nerve in his body ends where her mouth begins. The last thing that breaks through, that gives him the courage to stroke the beauty mark on her chin as a silent plea for more, is that she kisses him back.

When he pulls away, slowly, feeling wound tight, a shuddering breath runs through him, feeling his insides vibrating with too much energy, like he just cleared the first loop of a rollercoaster and he is already barreling towards the next. He opens his eyes with not a little apprehension, but hers are still closed. Yet, she smiles, soft and content. When her eyes open, they are green again.


	4. speak no evil II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Gold and silver burns my autumns_   
>  _All too soon they’d fade and die_   
>  _And then I’d know, there’d be no others_   
>  _Milk and honey were their lies_
> 
> Milk and Honey by Nick Drake (cover)

In the midst of the fray, he falls into step behind her. As the student body rounds the corner for the gymnasium, he wraps his hand around her wrist and tugs her out of lockstep, his free hand yanking open the door to the janitor’s closet and stealing her away.

He tumbles in behind her, falling back against the door with her wrist still in his hand. 

“Jug, I can’t see anything,” she whispers, fully aware half her peers are on the other side of the door.

“You don’t need to see for this,” he assures her, gently drawing her back into his arms.

As her arms drape over his shoulders, he beelines for her mouth, missing the mark his first attempt and catching her chin. She giggles, but he triumphs on the next try, snatching the laugh right out of her, shivering as it turns into a satisfied hum. He can taste that she applied a fresh coat of lip gloss, probably for the pep rally, yet there is no complaint on her end when he licks the seam of her mouth, a quiet appeal for admission. 

“Is this your hidey hole?” She inquires once he abandons her mouth to kiss down her jawline. 

“I know,” he acknowledges between affectionate nips under her chin. He straightens up, feeling some of her weight along his shoulders because she won’t let go. Looking down at her in the dim, his eyes adjust to the absence of light, her face a shadow against a shadow. “I’m sharing all my secrets with you.”

“I’m touched, Jones, that you would show me your dark corners,” she says, trailing off as she rolls up on her tiptoes. “With the spiders.” Her fingers grazing along the nape of his neck. “And the mice.” He feels the press of her stomach into his own as she leans into him. “Really gets a girl going.” Her lips find his again, and, emboldened, his hands curl around her waist, thumbs slipping underneath her cheerleading top to stroke the downy soft skin above her hipbones.

Thoroughly distracted by her mouth, it doesn’t register when she liberates his headphones from around his neck, settling them over her ears. “What are you listening to?” She wonders, and he catches her lips again, so eager their teeth knock during the landing.

He doesn’t know which track is playing right now, but he can feel every one of her heady breaths against him, the pace of her pulse racing under his thumb tracing underneath her jaw.

He is by no means a rookie in this department, but kissing had always been a perfunctory habit in his limited experience, something that more expected and less enjoyed. Toni, for instance, almost never let him kiss her, and when she did, it was a lesson and not anything remotely affectionate. So, Jughead treated it as just that, a standard operating procedure. He didn’t know if he would ever reach the point where he would want or even enjoy kissing someone. Until he met Betty Cooper.

Kissing Betty Cooper is turning out to be one of his favorite activities.

“Oh, you’re one of those kids,” she notes in between kisses.

He is caught off guard. “What’s that supposed to mean?” That statement without context could mean any number of things, and he feels a small bolt of unease clogging up his chest.

“Nothing,” she says flippantly, twirling loose strands of his hair around her fingers. “You’re just fitting into everybody’s stereotypes. So _dark wave_.”

“My music?” He assumes.

“Very wrist cutter.”

He leans forward to press his ear to one of the headphones, hears the droning of Ian Curtis. “I’ve got range,” he promises her, pushing one of the phones off her ears to slip her earlobe between his teeth.

“You should make me a mix tape,” she suggests, gasping when he flips their positions, pressing her back against the closet door.

“Was there a please somewhere in there?” She tugs him down by the front of his uniform sweater, her convincing, conniving tongue running along his bottom lip. He groans, fits himself more tightly against her, his hand wrapping up in her ponytail. It is unnerving how easily he forgets himself, reasoning it is the darkness of the janitor’s closet, maybe that short cheerleader skirt, or that she seems to enjoy it as much as he does. Kissing Toni was nothing like this. He could get terribly used to this.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” he grinds out, nearly breathless as he tilts his forehead against hers. “I couldn’t really taste the please.”

“Prove me wrong, Jones,” she dares, knowing that will incite him more than a pedestrian pretty please.

He feels her loop the headphones back around his neck before she softly nudges him back, putting distance between them. “Wait a bit before coming out, please.”

She would ask politely for _that_ , he thinks wryly with a lopsided smirk that ends on her mouth again and his hands bracing along her lower back. She giggles and pushes him away, ducking her head. “No more, Juggie. Cheryl will kill me if I’m late.”

“You can hang out with me in dark corners anytime, Betts,” he tells her because that is the only way he can be with her, and he wants that invitation to be as open as possible.

“You’re weirdly okay with this,” she notes, readjusting her ponytail and tugging her cheerleading top down to cover her midriff.

He feels a phantom urge in his fingertips to run across that strip of bare skin again. Instead, he shrugs even though she cannot see it very well in the dark. “This isn’t new territory for me, Ms. Cooper.”

That gives her pause. He cannot make out the expression on her face. It unnerves him, and he opens his mouth to give her a quick explanation, an excuse, but she just laughs short, breathlessly, shaking her head. “You’re just full of surprises, Jug.”

This territory is well-trod for him, well-mapped, being someone’s dirty little secret. And then, he thinks, well, this ends only one of two ways. He was left inside the closet the last go-around.

“Betty,” he calls gently when she reaches for the door handle, yet he doesn’t have anything, nothing to buffer the impending questions swelling up at the base of his throat like a bad bout of food poisoning.

She turns back around, waiting patiently for him to finish his thought, and that word strikes him, _patience_. _Never one of your virtues, Forsythe_.

“What is it, Jughead?”

He realizes he can be in the closet for now. He can be okay with that because it is fun. Toni was always saying that, and it was fun then with his former – whatever Toni ended up being. It was exciting, and, in all honesty, very informative for a teenage boy who didn’t know his ass from his elbow when it came to the female persuasion.

But, seeing the uncertain shadow of Betty Cooper in the dim of the janitor’s closet, he knows eventually he will want to come out. He feels a flicker of it now, that whatever this is, it might end up too big for the closet. Eventually, he will want all of her because he already feels borderline ravenous just kissing her. _You’re gonna need a bigger boat, Jones_.

As if reading his thoughts, Betty reaches for his hand, but it lands on the end of his sweater sleeve, and with a tender tug, she tells him, “You won’t like me out there, Jug.” It is followed by a shy beg that rends the bolus of his insecurity into little pieces, stuffs the questions back down into the black hole of his stomach. “So, please remember who I am in here.”

Then, she is folding back out into the light. He squints against the brightness, the wash of afternoon sun across her Canterbury blue uniform, the squeak of her bleach white Keds against the tile, her golden hair looking strangely untouched, and then it all goes to black as she shuts the door behind her.

“Betty.”

“Chuck!” She exclaims like she has been struck.

“What were you doing in the janitor’s closet?”

“Huh? Oh, I was hiding from Cheryl.”

“Why?”

“She likes to critique me before every pep rally,” she excuses breezily. “ _You need to clean your shoes before every show, Betty. You look like a farm worker,_ ” she finishes, putting on her best Cheryl impression. Jughead smothers a snigger, leaning back against the door, listening for the sounds of any other footsteps.

It takes a moment for him to realize she is alone with Chuck Clayton in a school hallway, and Jughead is cramped inside the janitor’s closet like a skeleton, relegated to the dark corners with the mice and the spiders. Then, he is glad to be here. She is not really alone, not with that cretin.

“You look fine to me,” Chuck assures her, then amends quickly, “I mean, great. You always look great.” _Fucking tool_ , Jughead thinks, rolling his eyes as he waits behind the door.

He can imagine it, her hand reaching for his bicep, an affectionate squeeze over the mesh of his football uniform. “Thanks, Chuck, you’re so sweet. But, you know Cheryl.” Jughead’s insides start to twist, cramping around that special hunger.

His father used to joke that Jughead had four stomachs like a cow. Now he thinks he has grown a fifth, and when she is in his hands, it opens its mouth only to be sated by the girl on the other side of the closet door.

He hates this feeling, but again, it is not altogether unfamiliar. _Come on, patience_.

“Hey, Betty, I was wondering if, you know, if you’re not going with anyone else, you’d want to go to Homecoming with me?”

Jughead drops his head back against the door, closing his eyes, and he can just see it in that golden afternoon light, the captain of the football team in his number eight jersey and the blonde cheerleader with her perky ponytail.

He keeps falling into these bad habits. Not that he was sharing Toni with the forward of the basketball team in Toledo, and sharing was a generous term. If anything, Toni was throwing him a bone, in more than one sense, he thinks, running his hands through his hair, knocking his crown off.

He cannot believe his luck, that he is about to lose out to the date rapist, feeling powerless to stop it, the universe flipping him the big karmic bird. Here he is on the other side of the door, the one stuck in the closet, her secret shame left with only the peachy remnants of her lip gloss on his tongue.

And then, the girl who is carving him inside out without much effort, saves Jughead’s pride with the runaround. “Oh, Chuck, that’s really sweet of you, but I don’t think I’ll be a very good date. I’m covering the dance for the paper. I won’t be very much fun.”

“Come on,” Chuck implores. “I don’t care about that stuff.” Jughead smirks. _Not a good tack, Chuckles_. “I’ll help you out.”

He can see her sidling away from the team captain, leaving Canterbury’s golden boy empty-handed. “Let me think about it, Chuck.”

“You’ll really think about it?”

Betty giggles. “I said I would, didn’t I?”

“I’m gonna hold you to it, Mini Coop.”

“Okay, Chuckles,” she sing-songs, her _okay_ drawn out with not a little sarcasm. “You’re gonna be late, team captain.”

Jughead hears the squeak of her Keds receding down the hallway.

That – that ended a little better than he thought it would, better than he could have anticipated.

Jughead waits another moment before cracking open the door, squints from the assault of light flooding in from the skylights. He glances quickly around the hallway, not a soul, and slips out of the janitor’s closet, closing the door behind him as quietly as possible. 

_Shit._ As he turns towards the gymnasium, he reasons that he was right. There wasn’t a soul.

Chuck stands up slowly from the drinking fountain, swiping across his mouth as he regards Jughead from across the hall. He didn’t see him because Chuck was behind the door to the janitor’s closet.

He really tries to stamp it down, but the smugness bleeds into a smirk, and he can feel it manifesting on his face, curling up from the edges of his mouths, brass in his cheeks. Not even Chuck’s dead eyes can stop the cocky grin that splits his face in two. Jug spreads his hands out wide from his sides. “I told you, Chuck. I don’t have to roofie a girl to get her to like me.” 

But, Chuck strides towards him unhurried, masked confidence in every step. He closes the distance between them until there is just enough space for the holy spirit. Jughead wills himself not to tilt his face away when Chuck gets up in it, forces himself not to blink as Chuck’s composure breaks into an unsettling smile. “At least she isn’t ashamed to be seen with me in public, Jones. Good luck getting out of that closet, you fucking Frankenstein.”

“She didn’t say yes, Chuckles.”

“You’re new here, Jones.” Chuck cants his head to the side, sizing him up. “No isn’t always no.” There’s only a shadow left from where Chuck knocked him in the mug, but the unapologetic gall of the statement makes Jug’s eye twitch something awful.

Chuck doesn’t stop there. “And Betty – she’s the type of girl that likes to play hard to get. She’s a tease. And this,” Chuck starts, waving his hand at Jughead, at the idea of Jughead Jones. “You? You are a project, an experiment in slumming it. But that’s all you are, Jones. A pit stop. Think about it, Jones, really give it some thought. Do you actually think a girl like Betty ends up with a guy like you? You really want to live with a bag over your head?”

Teeth grinding, Jug flexes his hands at his sides. “Yeah? You’re probably right, but she will never end up with you, Chuck. Over _my_ dead body.”

Chuck scoffs, a mean-spirited smile twisting up the right side of his face. “That can be arranged, Wednesday Addams.” Then, Chuck knocks him backwards with a swift shove at both his shoulders. “Out of my way, beta. Can’t have a pep rally without the team captain, huh, Jones,” he notes, excusing himself with a quick pat on Jughead’s burning cheek.

* * *

Miss Beazley gives Jug a generous helping of mashed potatoes and goes easy on the greens, and he smiles, bowing slightly when she flashes him a private smile that dies the moment Archie sidles into view.

Archie presents his tray, and she plops an obviously smaller portion onto his plate. When Archie politely asks for just a bite more, she shoos him away with a cutting wave of her silver spoon. Archie even tries his hand at bowing, and she slams the cover on the steaming mountain of mashed potatoes. The redhead sheepishly pulls his tray back, retreating to the bread rolls and gravy boats.

“Why is she so nice to you?” Archie wonders, loading up on rolls in lieu of mashed potatoes. “I don’t get it,” he sighs, staring forlornly at his pitiful scoop of potatoes next to a heap of mushy broccoli. “Everyone else thinks you are – well, kind of an asshole, but the lunch lady? How?”

Jughead piles two rolls onto his plate, dousing it all with two cups of gravy to accompany his three pork-chops. “It’s my golden rule, Arch. Don’t screw with the people who handle your food.”

“I never did anything to Miss Beazley,” Archie defends. “I mean, one comment on her meatloaf like two years ago, that I liked ketchup better than gravy.”

“You criticized her cooking? Archie, you monster!” He gasps, clutching his chest.

“I still ate it,” Archie points out, then his fork attempts a do-or-die dive for Jughead’s plate. “Hey, just give me a little. She gave you like three helpings.” Jughead smacks Archie’s hand so hard the fork goes flying across the cafeteria floor.

“Bernice was right about you,” Jughead scolds. “You have no couth.”

Archie cradles his punished hand, stinging red. “You’re on a first name basis, really?”

Jughead offers him a clean fork. When Archie moves to accept it, he pulls it just out of reach. “Manners and respect, Archie, that’s what gets you an extra helping of mashed potatoes.” He slaps the fork down in his roommate’s hand.

“Okay, mom,” Archie snorts, sticking his fork in the miniscule scoop of mashed potatoes and picking up his tray.

He follows Jughead towards the cafeteria tables, but when Jughead veers away from their usual haunt, he stops. “Where are you going?”

Jughead glances at his destination then back at Archie. “You don’t have to sit with me today. I’ve got _Blue and Gold_ business to attend to,” he explains, nodding at the table of seniors in the back of the cafeteria where Charles and Chic Cooper are the center of attention.

He continues his journey to the far corner of the cafeteria where most of the upperclassmen sit, mulling over a set-list of potential openers, and feels a bolster of confidence hearing Archie follow close behind. His roommate flanks him in solidarity when he confronts the group of seniors. Charles is the first to greet them, of course.

“Archie, hey!” Then, a more reserved but still polite, “Jughead Jones.” He really is Betty’s older brother, similar in demeanor, almost uncannily similar in mannerisms.

Chic doesn’t even afford them a nod. Jughead thinks no one has ever looked so sinister drinking from a carton of milk. Somehow, he cannot imagine the kid ever being the victim of a hazing ritual. Maybe the initiator.

Charles, cordial as ever, bids his friends to make room, clearing both his tray and Chic’s to allow space. Once Archie takes a seat, Charles turns to him first, “So, Archie, first game of the season coming up. You ready for the Exeter Lions?”

Archie flashes him his winning boy-next-door smile, humble and confident all-in-one, and for the first time, Jughead wonders if it is more practiced than he initially believed.

“What about you, Jughead? How is the article coming along?”

Caught with an overlarge mouthful of pork chop, he swallows painfully. “Yeah, that’s why we came over here. I wanted to ask you some follow up questions,” he explains, feeling the need to justify his existence at the table as he takes a swill of milk to help the pork chop go down easier.

“Shoot,” Charles grants, his chin balanced on his closed hands. Jughead spots, flanked between his elbows, that the eldest Cooper’s plate remains untouched.

“They’re more for Chic.”

The more unsociable Cooper recognizes his name, his mismatched eyes sliding up to engage Jughead. It feels like being caught in crosshairs.

Jughead toys with the lip of his milk carton, picking at the expiration date. “You both brought the midnight manhunt tradition back after what happened a few years ago,” he opens carefully.

“My eye,” Chic concludes easily. “You want to know how it happened?”

Jughead stops fiddling with his milk carton and shakes his head. “No, I wouldn’t ask you to do that.” Not that he isn’t curious, really dying to know, but Betty would flay him alive if she found out he had the nerve to even try asking. “I only wanted your perspective, and, um, your permission to report on that.”

“It isn’t a secret,” Chic informs him, and then, with all the emotion of a concrete block, he pops his fake eye out of its socket and offers it to Jughead. Archie spit-takes his orange juice, and Jughead feels the spray on his cheek.

“They did a good job on it,” the off-putting Cooper commends, displaying the imperfect sphere, less round than Jughead thought it would be. He is thoroughly impressed by the detailing of the cool blue iris. Charles murmurs his cousin’s name, a subdued scold, but Chic ignores him.

Jughead takes one moment to look at the empty socket of his left eye, the sunken droop of his eyelid obscuring the cryptic depths of the socket. His real eye, a sharper, more focused blue than the fake one in his hand, remains trained on Jughead, absorbing his reaction like he is licking his plate clean.

“You know it’s rude to pop your eye out at the dinner table, Chic,” Betty scolds from nowhere, smacking her cousin on the shoulder. “Sorry, he does this all the time.” She wiggles her way in between her brother and her cousin, kissing them both on the cheek. “Where were you, Charlie, when this was happening?”

As Charles fumbles for an excuse, Chic smirks, pinching his draping eyelid to manipulate the glass eye back into its socket. “You’ve got a strong stomach, Jones.”

Betty steals a piece of her cousin’s chocolate chip cookie off his plate. “Did you get your quotes, Jughead?”

His mind starts to catch up to the fact that he just watched one of his peers pull out his own fake eye and the girl he is secretly seeing is finally deigning to speak to him in public, and then someone throws a wrench in his biscuit board when he feels the toe of her sneaker gliding along his trouser leg. White-knuckling his fork, he asks Chic if he can write about what just happened, and, even though Chic actually chuckles, the flirtatious sneak of her ked becomes a sharp jab in his shin. He glances around for Cheryl or Veronica to come and put a swift end to this social interaction, but he only briefly locks eyes with Chuck Clayton across the cafeteria. 

“One last follow-up question,” Jughead bids, experimenting with her temperament, ignoring the jock staring knives four tables back. Her sneaker rises higher on his shin, the toe pressing into the bench-seat between his legs. “After what happened, what made you decide to bring the midnight manhunt back?” He reaches down to grip her ankle, his thumb dipping into the space between her sneaker and the tender spot behind the ankle bone. She jerks against him, covering it up with a cough and a draft of from her brother’s water glass.

Chic pokes his prosthetic eye, rolling it around in its socket, and despite knowing it is fake, the visual is still surreal. “Where would we be as a community without our traditions?” He releases his eye, and the pupil remains directed just off center from the real one. “It gives us our identity. It’s what keeps us together.”

If it had come out of Charles’s mouth, Jughead would have accepted that boiler plate response at face value.

“The midnight manhunt is a rite of passage,” he continues. “I may have come out of it with a little less of myself, but that is the lesson of a rite of passage. You lose a part of yourself to become a part of the whole.”

That tracks better, Jughead surmises tongue-in-cheek.

Betty, with the assist, adds, “What he means is that he and my brother are trying to get back to the heart of the midnight manhunt tradition. It is about facing your fears, social, psychological, even physical.”

“Being hunted in the dark,” Chic interjects, and Betty touches his shoulder, a gentle reminder to be tactful.

“These students are new here. They’re afraid, nervous, and this game is a way to help them integrate into the community. The game is stressful, but it is meant to be rewarding in the end.”

Her brother cuts in with more, and now Jughead wishes he had brought his tape recorder. “This school, it’s students, we lost sight of that for a while.” Jughead bites in the inside of his cheek trying not to at least smile at the unintended pun. “When I was a freshman, when Chic was, everyone thought it was supposed to be this harrowing experience. We weren’t expected to enjoy it, and it was supposed to be difficult. It was a hazing ritual. Chic and I just wanted to get this tradition back on track, that it does a lot of good for the students, both upper and lower classmen. Like Chic said, our traditions are what give our community our identity. They define us.” 

“Jughead,” Betty interrupts. “You’re not writing any of this down.” She narrows her eyes at the distinct absence of any notetaking device in front of him, and then a more pointed look at his overloaded dinner tray, the pile of cookies balanced precariously on the edge.

“I – I wasn’t exactly expecting this much.” The next look she gives him makes him feel like a kindergartener. _You should be better prepared for this_. “But, I’ve got it down,” he swears, ticking off the highlights. “Rite of passage, facing fears, community identity, the whole bit.” He strokes her ankle bone as an apology. Her leg slides back onto her side of the table.

“Well, we’ll see who has a better memory,” she challenges, moving to stand up from the table. “Your final draft tomorrow.”

He looks up at her, a hundred pounds and change of unadulterated dominance in the purposeful whip of her ponytail, the prim drape of her pleated skirt, her shirt still starchy stiff at the end of the day, and he can see for a moment how she ended up the third hand of that trio of teenaged dictators. It yanks the submission right out of his mouth, “You got it, boss.”

* * *

It filters through the general student body like a bad rash at a community center pool.

Jughead doesn’t feel the itch until he shows up after school on Wednesday to start working on the layout with Betty. He has learned to tune out most of the idle gossip that percolates through his peers at a steady, constant drip because that brew can be too sharp even for his tastes. Instead, he cooks up schemes to make Betty smile, maybe initiate a kiss or two.

He spent all last night working on a playlist for her tape, stopping and rewinding different cassettes into the zero hours with his headphones fixed over his ears as he chewed the end of his pen, drafting and redrafting the mix. Archie kept throwing things across the room at him, begging him to go to sleep, turn off the damn lights, stop clicking. His roommate got fed up around one in the morning, finally crossing the room and smothering Jughead with his own pillow. 

Ignoring the scent of bitter almonds from Dr. Benzene’s prep room, he waltzes into the _Blue and Gold_ office with her mix tape triumphantly clutched in his hand, and it promptly dies in his throat when he sees the look on her face.

“What’s wrong?” It is instinct, closing the door behind him gently and hastily moving to join her at the desks, but when she hears the click of the latch bolt, she startles to standing. “What is it?”

“Can you please open the door?” He can tell she is trying to moderate the pace of her words, but he has already caught the panicky undertone, and it sends a flare of anxiety crawling up his stomach, burning in his throat.

Slipping the mix tape into his jacket pocket, he glances back at the door and then at her. “Sure.”

Her fists are clenched at her sides, waiting for him to turn around and reopen the office door. He does, watches her shoulders relax as the space between the door and jamb gets wider.

Once the door is fully open behind him, he asks, “Betty, what happened?”

“Were you at Cheryl’s party?”

He pulls his hand out of his pocket, leaves the cassette there. “Yeah.”

“Did we – did we meet at some point?”

“Not exactly.”

She takes a step towards him. He notices her book bag isn’t where she normally leaves it, on her desktop. She came here empty-handed.

“What does that mean?”

He shrugs, and her stare grows large and loaded, her eyes practically glowing green with rage he has never seen before.

“We weren’t formally introduced,” he offers weakly. Then, he feels a rush of déjà vu. He knows what this is now. He has been in that room enough times with the buzzing fluorescent lights and the two-way mirror. This is an interrogation, and by the look on her face, he can tell he has already made one misstep, maybe two.

Her temper dissolves, replaced with what he thinks might be disappointment, even worse revulsion. “I blacked out at Cheryl’s party.”

“I know,” he admits. He has that twisting, jittering feeling in his gut like he wants to run away, the same feeling he had when his mother woke him up in the middle of the night and took him to the woods behind Magee Marsh.

“Veronica told me nothing happened,” she says slowly, staring at a spot on the floor now as if she is piecing together a puzzle from a thrift store, too many essential spots left blank, filling in the spaces on her intuition alone. “But, I remember going upstairs. I don’t remember who I was with, though. The last thing I can remember is falling on Cheryl’s bed, and I just wanted to go to sleep but there were hands on me. Veronica said nothing happened, and so I just assumed maybe I dreamed it.”

“Betty,” he tries, sensing with not a little dread where this is going.

She cuts him off. “I remember being in the kitchen with Chuck and Nick, and then I said I had to go to the bathroom, but there was a long line downstairs. I knew Cheryl had a private one in her bedroom, so I went upstairs. Chuck said he and Nick came to check on me because it had been a while.” She looks him square, and he feels like he is in a tilting hallway in a funhouse, the ground moving underneath him while she remains the still point at the end of the tunnel. “How’d you get that black eye, Jughead, the one you had at the beginning of the year?”

“Betty, I don’t know what Chuck told you,” he starts.

She snaps, “Just tell me how you got that black eye.”

“I went upstairs to have a smoke,” he says, launching into his version of the events, but she won’t have it.

“The black eye, Jughead. Who hit you? Why did they hit you?”

He deflates with the truth. “Chuck hit me.”

“Why did he hit you?”

The anger he felt that night bubbles up inside him without warning, hemorrhaging into full-blown fury at the accusatory look in her eyes. “You’re going to believe him over me.”

She crosses her arms in defiance. “I don’t know you, Jughead.”

He wants to tell her she is living in a pit of snakes, that he knows, he grew up in a similar place, just less luxury and English ivy. _You’re living in a den of liars, blondie, and it starts with your boyfriend Chuck Clayton_. It isn’t his voice, though, but his mother’s in the back of his mind. He yanks his crown off his head, nails raking through his hair in frustration.

Raising his hands towards her, she backs away, eyeing his open palms like they are weapons. “How could you do that to me?” His own anger blinks out of existence with her own, every muscle in his chest cramping with the sound of her despair.

He drops his hands, looking down at the well-worn gray wool of his crown seized within white-knuckles, hearing his mother laughing at him, overlaid with Chuck’s, Nick’s, even Veronica’s and Archie’s.

“Please don’t come here anymore,” she requests in a timid murmur, and he wants her to say it like she means it, not like she is afraid of him. “Please don’t talk to me ever again.” Then, she gives him a wide berth on her way out of the office. He listens to the broken tap of her Mary Jane’s against the tile as they recede down the hallway, the smell of bitter almonds turning his stomach.

After marinating in the chemical fumes until he can no longer imagine eating anything for a week, Jughead shoves his hands in his jacket pockets as he turns to leave, too, his fingers brushing against the mix tape. He pulls it out, balanced in the palm of his hand like a baby bird. He clicks open the cover to read his messy scrawl, _Elektra_ by the _Reivers_ and _Expresso Love_ by _Dire Straits_ and all the others, his feeble love letter to her. _Pining like an asshole_ , he reminds himself. He thinks for the first time about the monetary value of his word, his honor, the worth of it in this place as his love letter shatters into tiny pieces of plastic and tangles of cassette film against the wall of the _Blue and Gold_.


	5. hear no evil II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I was detained, I was restrained_   
>  _And broke my spleen and broke my knee_   
>  _And then he really laced into me_   
>  _Friday night in-out patients_   
>  _Who said I’d lied to her?_
> 
> Stop Me If You Think That You’ve Heard This One Before by The Smiths

A week before the news came, he ran the gauntlet.

That morning, his father cooked him breakfast, made some stale joke about last meals. As FP loaded his plate with frozen hashbrowns and sunny-side up eggs, he asked Jug if he wouldn’t take another shot at school. ‘It’s not too late.’

It felt like it then. He spent six months of his junior year in and out of reconstructive surgeries, and he spent the remainder recovering from being carved up like a Christmas ham. Then, there was the business of transferring credits from Toledo to his zone school in Riverdale. He nearly joked meanly that maybe he could test out, considering half the student body at Southside could barely read at the seventh grade level.

With what little clout his dad had on the other side of the tracks, his dad guaranteed him a spot at Riverdale High, but then, there was a good chance even less of his credits at Toledo might carry over to Riverdale High. There would be repeat courses and learning curves. His eighteenth birthday was around the bend.

‘You don’t want me to join?’

‘Goddamnit, Jughead, I’m not your mother,’ his father snapped, pushing away from the dinette to refill his coffee mug. ‘I don’t give a shit what you do. I’m not going to say no, but you have options. I know your mother thinks differently, but the Serpents aren’t the end-all-be-all.’

After his last surgery, Jughead didn’t think so either. When his short story was published in the _New Yorker_ , Jug got the bright idea to apply for a scholarship out of this fresh hell hole. He was late in the admission process, but he hoped his essay and the _New Yorker_ story might win him a few favors. Three months later with junior year cemented firmly behind him as summer settled in, the ore of his confidence was ground to bedrock. He had no more pride to mine, and he felt perhaps he had wasted his time. Each day the mailbox remained empty of even a rejection letter, and he started to feel his options bottlenecking.

By the end of July, he felt well and truly left behind. Summer was ending. He would have been prepping for senior year, and, with Toni graduated, preparing to take over as chief editor of the _Red and Black_. He would have begun considering college applications, studying for the ACT, and helping Sweet Pea with his own admissions essays and interviews for basketball scholarships.

On the first of August, he asked his dad if he could join the Serpents. _Of course, kid_. As if the option was always there. As if it would always be waiting for him.

The morning of, his father made him breakfast with one last ditch effort to convince Jughead to at least test for his GED. That same afternoon, he didn’t know if he was drooling more blood than spit, but that he couldn’t keep it all in his mouth, and the thought of swallowing it turned his stomach.

As he approached the first in line, he requested they be careful of his arm. The stitches were out, but the skin was brand new. The guy nodded, reasonable, even agreeable, and then his fist was breaking in Jughead’s face. He felt every individual knuckle connecting with his jaw, and wondered if he had made a mistake.

The next, Mustang, whapped him right over the healed stitches, and Jughead didn’t feel a thing. Another landed a blow on his upper left shoulder, and while still painful, it was minor compared to the next fist he felt whacking him just under his right shoulder blade, dangerously close to his kidneys. As he trudged through the flanks, he made a point of angling the left side of his body towards the subsequent blows until, nearly to the end, someone gut punched him.

Diaphragm seizing, it was a chore just to clear the last few bodies. By the time he reached his father, all of his weight was sagging into his locked knees. A light breeze would have toppled him. He felt the air move, but it wasn’t light, and when the brass knuckles on the ends of his father’s hand met his cheekbone, he finally did go down.

_Like a sack of potatoes,_ his father joked later, slapping a bag of frozen peas over Jug’s swollen eye while Mustang’s daughter inked the two-headed serpent into his skin.

The entirety of his body felt broken, worse than when he woke up in St. Charles, and he was glad, relieved he could still feel something worse than that. He asked Mustang’s daughter if she could draw the tattoo on his left arm, over the scar. She pointed the needle at the bruise forming from where her father whacked him out of spite, and told Jug that it might hurt more.

‘It has to be there,’ he told her.

He wanted it to hurt more. There was almost a longing quality behind it, that he needed to keep hurting because the numbness he had felt since that night in the marsh was worse. He would rather hurt than feel nothing at all.

While she worked the needle, his father set a cold beer in front of him. He clinked his bottle with his dad’s, and when he went to take his first swig, FP squeezed his shoulder in a way he hadn’t since Jughead was very little.

He finished that beer and four more at the bar later with the rest of the Serpents. Mustang got him to do a shot.

Proper drunk after midnight on a Thursday, Jughead ended up in the hallway to the bathrooms feeding quarters into the payphone. She was an hour behind him, but he remembered her landline on the second attempt.

‘Jughead, Jesus, it’s nearly midnight. What the hell?’

He let the last swallow of his beer slide down his throat. The response was wet and garbled. ‘Do you miss me?’

‘Jug,’ she chastised gently over the phone. He could just see the disappointed pinch of her tongue against her teeth as she spoke his name.

‘Did you get into Northwestern?’

She sighed. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Yes.’ A couple of leather jackets barreled into the hallway, swearing as they stumbled into the men’s restroom. ‘I miss you.’

‘Why don’t you call me tomorrow, you know, when the sun is out? And you’re sober.’

Eyes closed, he felt the floor swaying underneath him, and pressed his forehead to the box of the payphone to center himself. ‘Because tomorrow I’ll be myself again, and that guy promised you – promised himself that he wouldn’t go backwards.’ When he opened his eyes, he saw his face in the chrome of the phone box, stretched and pinched in all the wrong places.

‘Jug, did something happen?’

‘I joined a gang,’ he blurted. ‘Not that that’s new. I was in a gang in Toledo, too. It’s the family business. But, here I am, going backwards.’ He trailed off, yawning. ‘Going for what’s familiar. What’s easy.’

‘Jug.’

‘Just tell me if you got into Northwestern,’ he snapped, cutting her pity off at the knees. 

There was a beat of silence. He could hear the distance in the crackle of the line. ‘Yeah, I got in.’

His brain felt like it would melt out through his ears, and he collapsed into the wall, the receiver pressed between the phone-box and his ear. ‘Good,’ he gushed. ‘Good, congrats. That’s great, Toni. Journalism?’

‘Yeah.’ She muffled the receiver, but he heard her speak softly to someone else in the room. ‘Jug, are you okay?’

His face was pulped, and he thought he might be on the verge of throwing up. ‘You know, yeah, great. Great. I’m a high school dropout living in a trailer park in nowhere upstate New York with a drunk dad, no job, medical bills up the ass. I’m great, and I was just hoping that when I said I miss you, you might say it back.’

‘I’m not going to throw you a pity party, Jughead.’

He laughed bitter. ‘Yeah, you were never good at that.’

‘Good at what?’

‘Compassion.’

‘I’m hanging up now.’

He scoffed. ‘Good! At least you’re fucking consistent. Here, I’ll help you out.’ He slammed the receiver on the hook, angrily checking the drop slot for leftover quarters. His father had a fresh beer waiting for him on the bar top.

A week later the envelope came in the mail. It could barely fit inside their tin fish mailbox. Jug’s hands trembled holding it. He didn’t make it back to the trailer before he was tearing at the manila paper to get inside, like a starved junkyard dog who just got a hold of the first dumb baby squirrel of spring. On top of the stack of paperwork and pamphlets and images of a future he thought he would be left only dreaming about, the letter was addressed directly to him.

_Dear Mr. Forsythe Pendleton Jones III_ , _we are pleased to inform you_.

Ripping open that envelope felt like cracking the world open like an egg, and reading the letter, he imagined for the first time in a long time that if he had the force of will, the intestinal fortitude, he could make a perfect omelet out of his rotten Jones luck.

His mother destroyed him. He could admit that, but holding that letter, he felt for the first time the necessity of her transgressions. For all her faults, his mother had given him the tools to make the best of a shitty situation, to take risks, to be resourceful. With his clean slate in the palms of his hands, he held his will to power, over himself, over his mother’s expectations, over the entire world that always felt at constant odds with his desires. With that letter in his hands, he saw it, above all else, he felt he had earned the chance to write his ticket from the ruin of her own.

* * *

He feels like a right moron now for getting into a pissing contest with Chuck Clayton. Tact and subtlety were never his strong suits. He fucked his clean slate before the semester was even halfway over.

When Archie takes his proprietary seat across from him in the dining hall the following Monday, he barely affords his loyal roommate a glance, conceding, “You warned me.”

Archie gives him a sad, _buck-up_ smile and plies him with comfort breakfast foods. “Yeah, but I didn’t think it would turn out like this.”

“Aren’t you afraid to be seen with me?” He wonders, accepting the extra bacon and blueberry muffin anyway.

Jughead wonders whether Archie’s reputation could afford the hit or if his roommate just doesn’t care, if the opinions of others are the least of his worries, if a kid like Archie has worries. He can feel a hundred stares boring into the back of his neck, but Archie drinks from his carton of whole milk without a care in the world.

Jug used to pride himself on not giving two shits what anyone thought of him, but he can feel a rash of shame flaring up to the tips of his ears, glad they are hidden underneath his beanie. He used to convince himself that the judgments of sheep were not his concern, but this is – it’s different. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him, but he feels outright leveled by the thoughts of one person in particular. How quickly her opinion became the only one that seemed to matter, that half his actions were in service to her smile, her admiration, the confluence of their goals in the paper. He only cares what one person thinks, and she thinks he is a villain.

“You didn’t do anything,” Archie reasons simply, shrugging and stirring the cheddar into his scrambled eggs, topping it with a generous splashing of Tabasco.

“You don’t know that.”

The redhead pauses in his stirring, his gaze lifting to mark Jughead where he sits, certainty and understanding and maybe even a little pity in his kind brown eyes. “Come on, Jug, I know.”

It is a kindness that chafes, and Jughead shrinks into his seat, crumbling Archie’s pity bacon into his scrambled eggs as he avoids looking anywhere past the imaginary boundary he has drawn around their table. “What do I do?”

The redhead repeatedly stabs his fork into his eggs, scanning the cafeteria for him, gauging the general mood. “I don’t know, man,” he confesses, taking a bite. His tone doesn’t inspire much confidence. “Even if I tried to say something, it is still their word against mine.”

“And mine,” Jughead charges.

“And who are you?” Archie ignores his offended look, pointing his fork at him. “I don’t mean to be mean, Jug, but what is your word worth here? Think about who you’re up against.”

“You could talk to Betty,” Jughead suggests, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice, keeping it low in case of eavesdroppers.

Archie sighs. “I’ve tried, Jug.”

“Veronica, you could talk to her,” he pushes.

Archie shakes his head, seeming amused by Jughead’s naivete. Jughead has to bite his tongue to keep from lashing out. “You really don’t know how things work here.”

Jug’s fist lands hard on the table. “Yeah, I’m finding that out real quick.” When heads start turning, he buries his hands in his lap, staring at the mess of uneaten food on his plate. “God,” he vents, his gaze snapping up at his last friend. “How can you date someone like her? She’s – she’s intolerable.”

Archie gives him a warning look, but Jughead wants to keep yanking on those mental threads, see how much slack he has with his only ally in this entire shit-show. “You don’t know her, Jughead. She’s not like that all the time. She’s actually a really good friend.”

Jug scoffs. “Some friend.”

Archie’s fork clatters onto his plate. “Okay,” he breathes out slowly. Jughead cannot imagine how he manages to keep calm. “I know this isn’t great, and you’re not in a good place, so I’m going to let some of this go, but you don’t know my girlfriend, Jughead. I’ll do what I can, but you need to maintain.”

“Maintain,” Jughead repeats dumbly.

He isn’t exactly accustomed to waiting. His mother always said patience was not one of his virtues, that he was impulsive like his father, and he probably wouldn’t get screwed so often if he just took a pause. He takes one now to glance at the table Betty shares with her co-tyrants, but he feels the immediate impulse to march across the cafeteria and vomit the truth onto their practically empty breakfast trays. The glance tears open a pouch of instant regret because the responding look she throws his way is so cold that he feels goosebumps erupting underneath the guilt rash on the back of his neck. He can’t even keep to his own advice, to his own boundaries.

Archie nudges him out of his inner bedlam of his disordered thoughts, pulling him back into reality. “My dad always says the truth has a way of coming out. You just have to be patient, Jug,” Archie assures him. His blind certainty is as annoying as it is infectious, but it works. “Trust in that.”

* * *

Jughead stands outside the door to the _Blue and Gold_ for a solid five minutes deliberating with himself. He reaches for the door handle at least a dozen times while listening to Dr. Benzene demonstrate the proper greasing technique for joints in a distillation set-up.

He hears the clinking of glass tubing and some boy’s crude comment to his female lab partner about how he could grease up some other joints. Dr. Benzene throws out a quick rebuke as the rest of the kids start laughing, and the muscles in Jughead’s hand feel paralyzed, hovering in no-man’s land above the door knob.

She must spot the shadow of his feet loitering under the door because not a minute after the laughter starts, she locks the door. His forehead falls against the marbled glass with the finality of the dead bolt’s click. He doesn’t know if he will be able to switch out of his independent study this far into the semester.

“Hellcaster Jones.”

Jonathon Kurtz perches at the end of a locker row, half his body bisected by the intersection of two hallways. He steps out to get a look at the door where Jughead has planted himself. It must be a pathetic sight. The grin that flashes across the kid’s mouth looks like the splash-back from a swiped blade, sweeping up the sides of his face, and Jughead rubs the back of his neck, repeating Archie’s mantra in his head.

“You busy, hellcaster?” Kurtz flashes the decorated wooden box at Jughead. It looks so similar to Doiley’s that Jug wonders if he stole it.

Jug steps back from the _Blue and Gold_. “Seems I have an opening in my schedule.”

“My luck.” Kurtz waggles the box in the direction he was heading, an invitation.

Jug shifts his book-bag higher and abandons his useless post by the _Blue and Gold_. As he follows Kurtz around the corner, he thinks he hears the lock click open, but tells himself he only imagined it.

“You have an independent study, too?” He wonders aloud, keeping two steps behind Kurtz.

“Sure, something like that,” Kurtz tosses back, rounding another corner. He slows down so they match step-for-step, his beady eyes shifting to study Jughead sidelong. “What were you doing at the school paper?”

“You know we have a school paper?” Jughead asks, a little incredulous that a kid like Kurtz would know something like that. No one else seems aware of the _Blue and Gold’s_ existence.

Kurtz shrugs. “I know Betty Cooper runs it.”

“You know Betty Cooper?” Jug wonders, trying to sound casual.

Kurtz snorts, like he is entertained by Jug’s faux nonchalance. “I know of her. Everybody knows of her,” he explains, pausing to flash his shark eyes askance, and Jughead’s knuckles start to itch. “Everybody knows what happened to her.”

Kurtz stops them at the dead end of the westernmost corner of the main hall.

“Rumors sure travel fast here,” Jughead muses, Archie’s warning to _maintain_ scratching at his ear. It’s only been a week, and Jughead is, from all angles, the official school pariah.

“Like wildfire,” Kurtz agrees, and then another sly glance. “Is it true?”

“If I say no, will you believe me?”

“I don’t believe anything I haven’t seen for myself,” Kurtz maintains, then adds, “But, that doesn’t mean I would believe you either.”

“Then, why ask?”

“Curiosity,” he tells Jug, opening the door to an empty classroom.

“Where’s your crew?” Jug asks, following him into the classroom, expecting at least a couple other roleplaying nuts.

Kurtz sets the box on the teacher’s desk. “They chickened out.” He takes a seat in the teacher’s chair, lifting the lid on the box.

“Were you planning on playing with yourself?”

Kurtz removes the cradle of die, the decks of game cards, and sets them on the desktop with care. “I was going to recruit stragglers,” he claims, and somehow Jug finds that difficult to believe. “This is a good opportunity for you, though, hellcaster. I’ll go easy on you, so you can build your character.”

“Do you even remember my character?” Jughead wonders, dragging a chair to the opposite side of the desk.

“Do you?” Kurtz charges, then slaps a piece of paper down in front of Jughead.

Jughead glances down at it, sees his name, character level, a list of abilities and skills. “Did you write one up for me or something? How sweet.”

“Has anyone ever told you you ask too many questions?” Kurtz asks, propping up his game master’s folder.

“Yep.” He gets a closer look at the box. It has to be Doiley’s, the same hand-painted red and gold filigree on a black background. “Does Doiley know you stole his game box?”

Jug makes a grab for the game box, and Kurtz yanks it away, nearly snarling. “This is _my_ game box,” he insists, stressing the possessive. “Most of us got them from the same place, you rube.” He glares at Jughead’s reaching hand. Jug pulls his hand back at the affronted jut of Kurtz’s chin. “Besides, I wouldn’t be throwing stones if I were you, Jones. You don’t have a lot of friends left in this school.”

Not that Jughead was ever really concerned with the caste struggles of his peers, but listening to a kid like Kurtz essentially confirm his near complete fall from grace still rubs him the wrong way. Taking a deep breath, he bends himself backwards over the chair, waiting for each vertebrae to pop and release all the little annoyances that have been working their way into his bones for the past week. He doesn’t realize how tightly he’s been wound up until he finishes at the top of his shoulders, misses Sweet Pea for a moment because that guy was always good at getting all the kinks out of Jug’s back with one borderline painful bear hug. Maybe if he asked Archie nicely. The redhead looked like he could get the job done. He reminds himself that he never really had a lot of friends before either and he was perfectly okay with that. Better to have a few genuine friends than a mob of backstabbers.

When he curls back towards the desk, bringing his hands onto the desktop and cracking each knuckle, he wonders aloud if he can ask Kurtz another question.

Kurtz groans, his forehead falling with an exasperated thud to the desktop. He asks the ink blotter, “If I said no, would that stop you?”

“Nope,” Jughead concludes quickly, finishing the last click of his right thumb. He ignores Kurtz’s irritated laugh. “You’ve gone to school with these kids for a long time, right?”

“Since kindergarten, I suppose,” Kurtz sighs, dragging himself upright. “Why?”

“You’re probably a couple years younger, but do you know Chuck Clayton or Nick St. Claire?”

“You mean your accusers,” Kurtz clarifies just to be mean. “Yeah, like I said, since grade school. Also, I’m in your Civics class, dick. Doiley was right, you really aren’t that observant. Or selectively observant.”

Jug can claim guilty on that one. Toni used to complain about the same thing, that he could be strangely narrow-minded, but it was usually because he had a bead on a story. Besides, there are a lot of distractions in his Civics class, he wants to say, like that girl, the one with the meadow-green eyes and the Bacall shoulders, that infuriating editor of the school paper who rips his words to shreds, just the sight of her like the bang of the gate outside of the Master’s house, a delightful pain in the center of his chest.

“I’m betting Betty wasn’t the first girl,” Jughead contends, and Kurtz looks impressed that Jughead could say it out loud. “Maybe for Chuck but not a guy like Nick St. Claire. You’ve known them a long time. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re talking to the wrong guy, Jones,” Kurtz informs him, knocking down the game-master’s folder when he recognizes they are a long way from starting a quest. “But, I can point you in the right direction.”

“Tell me,” he practically begs.

Kurtz exhales like Jug is a lost cause. “You should talk to Trevor. You remember Trevor, right?”

“Of course,” Jughead confirms, a little offended. He isn’t that myopic.

“Trevor would know better than anyone. He’s a jock.”

“My roommate’s a jock, and he hasn’t been much help.” 

“You mean Andrews?” Kurtz snorts, raising his eyebrows at Jughead’s continued ignorance. Jug’s wondering if he should have caught on quicker, remembering Evernever telling him that the kids in this school spoke another language altogether, that there was no guidebook. “Andrews is too good for this. Hell, I’d call Trevor too goody-two-shoes for this, but Trevor isn’t best friends with some of the girls on the list. He isn’t dating one.”

Jughead’s mind hiccups on that. “Wait, what list?”

“I don’t know, Jones,” Kurtz groans, his patience wearing thin. ”Trevor’s mentioned it a few times. That’s why I’m telling you to go to him. It’s some running list of girls those guys have. Start there,” Kurtz explains in a muddle. “Now, are we going to play a game or not? I’m kind of regretting even asking now.”

Jug feels kind of bad now, decides it wouldn’t hurt to humor him. “Sure, yeah, what’s the quest?”

Kurtz’s mood visible brightens, resetting his game master folder with a glimmer of glee glancing off his black eyes. Jughead thought no one had true black eyes, but he cannot detect a hint of pigment in Kurtz’s.

“This one is relatively easy,” Kurtz starts, retrieving his notes. “We’ve been tasked with retrieving the prophet’s eye from one of the Gargoyle King’s enclaves, the tombs of the soothsayers. Rumor has it the eye is being kept in one of their vaults deep in the tombs, guarded by a vicious dog the size of a bear. To reach this vault, you must first find the map to the tombs.” 

“Okay, how do I get the map?”

Kurtz nudges the cradle of die towards him. “Imagination, Jones.”

“Fine,” Jug exhales, picking up the twelve-sided die. “Someone’s gotta know where I can find this map. Is there, um, a village somewhere close by?”

Jug spends the next hour of his independent study playing make-believe with Jonathon Kurtz, and it isn’t the most unpleasant experience. For a moment, he lets himself get lost in the story, understanding the game’s appeal. The hour passes quickly.

He gambles for the map at a tavern in the village, and upon reaching the tombs, Kurtz informs him with a sinister flare that the tombs are an ever-changing labyrinth of caves, a puzzle Jughead must solve to access the vault. Kurtz slides him a sheet of paper and a pencil, instructing him to solve the puzzle to get the key.

“Did you draw this yourself?” Jug asks, studying the intricacies of the maze detailed in fine-point pen on the paper. He wants to know if Kurtz knows how much he enjoys puzzles, that his mother gave him his first Rubik’s cube when he was eight and some new puzzle every holiday after that.

“I like puzzles,” Kurtz explains simply but he smiles. It might even be a real one when Jughead puts the pencil to the paper.

There is more to the maze than meets the eye though as Jughead begins tracing his path towards the key. He reaches certain points where he must solve riddles, manipulate unseen levers and buttons based on verbal explanations only, shifting chambers and opening pathways in the maze. Eventually, he reaches the center of the maze and finds the key to vault 314 at the same moment the eighth period bell rings.

“Damn it,” he shouts, reels himself back in just as quickly, surprised by how deeply he let himself get caught up in the quest. He was just about to go looking for the dog guarding the vault, a dog as big as a bear according to Kurtz.

“We can keep playing,” Kurtz offers, juggling three die.

Jughead glances at the clock. “No, I can’t miss class.”

Kurtz drops his head back against the seatback. “I forget you’re a scholarship student. Different standards.” He catches all the die in his right hand. “Some other time then, Hellcaster Jones.”

Jughead nods and offers to help him clean up. Kurtz declines. “You’ll be late for class.”

Jughead, gathering his book-bag and replacing his chair, tells Kurtz that he actually had a lot of fun.

“It’s nice, isn’t it,” Kurtz muses quietly, carefully lining the dice in their wooden cradle. “Lets you forget things for a little while.” Kurtz fiddles with the twelve-sided die, considering its black and white alternating faces with subdued contemplation, something almost wistful or mournful in his gaze.

“Let’s play again soon,” Jughead suggests, and Kurtz gives him a small nod before he goes.

* * *

“Well, that’s not Latin,” Jughead comments, hopping up on the desktop in front of Trevor Brown after class on Tuesday. The rest of the students file out for lunch, but Trevor lingers, to Jug’s advantage.

Still, Trevor glances nervously at the bustling hallways. “Jughead, right.” He plasters on his best faux polite smile, closing his sketchbook.

Jughead swipes it up onto his lap, flipping open the front cover with a flourish. “A jock and an artist,” he expresses with some praise, some surprise, and Trev looks to be debating whether or not he should steal it back and make a run for the door. Jughead decides to take advantage of his good manners.

“You seem like a good guy, Trev. Do you think you’re a good guy?” Jughead licks his thumb and turns the page, his grip lax on the binding of the sketchbook like a dare. “I think you’re a good guy, for what it’s worth, “Jug offers, casting his vote honestly.

“I have to get to lunch.” Trevor holds a hand out towards the sketchbook, not looking for a fight.

Jughead makes note of his outstretched hand, looks back down at the sketches, flips the page. “I wanted your opinion on something.”

“I really have to get going,” he tries again, and Jug thinks he might cut loose, abandon the sketchbook. “I’m sorry.”

Jughead’s gaze slithers up to catch his kind but worried big browns, and it feels like pinning a bunny in a snare. “What do you have to be sorry about?” He promised himself he would do this gently, courteously, but he can hear the frustration in his voice. He is about to throw subtlety to the wind, arguing with his inner Archie that he cannot be expected to learn tact in a day. His time is running out.

He closes the sketchbook and slaps it down onto Trevor’s open hand. Before the kid can take it, he tightens his grip on the binding. “How can you let them get away with it again?”

Trevor carefully tugs on the sketchbook, a timid draw and another uneasy glance towards the hallway, at the stragglers meandering by. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jughead frowns, releasing the sketchbook, mediocre leverage at best. “I’ll consider this the first denial, Peter.”

Someone breaks out laughing from the doorway just as Trevor shoves his sketchbook into his bag and stands up.

“And he went outside and wept bitterly,” Chuck exclaims from the threshold. “Seriously, Jones? Weak.”

Trevor shoulders his book-bag, looking at Jughead with something resembling contrition, but his words communicate the opposite, “I’m sorry, Jughead, but I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” He gives Chuck an obligatory nod on his way out the door.

Jughead turns towards the door just in time to catch Chuck flashing two peace fingers before disappearing into the hallway. Jug wants to think third time will be the charm, but he isn’t so sure.

* * *

After lunch, another teacher’s aide drags him from Civics class, much to Miss Putnam’s chagrin. She signs his pink slip and flashes it at him with a peevish reminder that there is an exam this coming Thursday. He follows the teacher’s aide back to the administrative side of the building, seeing that once again Counselor Evernever is pulling him from class for a one-on-one. It isn’t cute anymore.

He marches into the guidance counselor’s office without knocking, a snark on the tip of his tongue that it is downright unpatriotic to keep him out of Civics, that the good counselor risks Jughead falling prey to the commies if he doesn’t know how many representatives are in the House or how many states it takes to ratify an amendment. But then, when Evernever waves for Jughead to take a seat without so much as a light scolding, Jug wonders if the good counselor keeps pulling him near the end of Civics to keep him out of the next, that maybe Evernever is protecting him from the horrors that surely await him in physical education with Chuck and the rest of his troglodytes, Archie notwithstanding.

On Monday alone, Coach Kleats was forced to keep the peace by shifting the agenda from dodgeball to tennis and placing Jughead on the farthest court with Archie, the only other student that would willingly partner with him. Kleats thought tennis was neutral enough, but it didn’t stop the other kids from taking potshots at Jug from their respective courts. He got pinged in the back more than once, twice in the head by Chuck Clayton alone.

‘Are you kidding me?’ He shouted two courts over, ready to throw his racket down and risk a detention just to get in a few licks of his own. Archie was slowly weaving his way in between them, anticipating at least one of them saying to hell with it and making a break across the courts for the other.

‘You’re lucky I don’t come over there and break this racket over your face!’ Chuck threw back before Kleats could come and intervene.

“Things didn’t exactly shake out for you, did they, Jughead,” Evernever speculates, rhetorically, as Jughead takes his seat.

“What have you heard then?” He smooths his sweaty palms along the chair arms to keep them dry.

“Nothing good,” Evernever admits, keeping it vague, probably for Jug’s benefit. “I’ve been talking with Father Weatherbee. He thinks we should suspend you until the administration can figure out exactly what happened.”

“I told you what happened,” Jughead reasons. “Did you tell Weatherbee that? Besides, there isn’t any proof. It’s their word against mine.” 

For the second time that week and without an ounce of malice, someone asks quite plainly what his word is worth. Jug never imagined he would have to ponder something that would sounds so objectively absurd. Worse, he never imagined it would hurt as much as it does to know the value of his words, that within the social hierarchy of this school, his honor is bankrupt. It was something he never had to consider. Like Archie said, he always believed the truth would come out on its own, that he would find it in his own time. Jesus, that he would have the time.

Now, Evernever is talking about suspensions, and it feels eerily similar to a trial without due process to appease the students and probably the parents who want Jug’s head because well – money.

He is almost too afraid to ask. “Am I going to lose my scholarship?” He regrets it immediately afterward, feels pretty dumb for even asking when he damn well knows the answer.

“Probably,” Evernever supposes without a blink of pity. “The suspension might be a good thing.” When Jughead gives him a look of disbelief, he adopts a more mollifying tone, “Hear me out, Jughead. It can give me some time to build your defense and let some of the hotter heads cool down.”

“Wait, you’re defending me?” He cannot quite believe it.

“Of course,” the good counselor attests, like he never considered an alternative.

“You believe me?” It is starting to kill him. All these people placing their trust in him, in his word, either silently or vocally, and yet the one person he needs to believe him just won’t. It is maddening.

“I understand what these students are like, Jughead,” Evernever points out, sounding disappointed that Jughead failed to take his words to heart at the beginning of the year. Jug has spent enough of the last week beating himself up over all the missed warning signs, but somehow Evernever’s disappointment manages to cut deeper than his private self-flagellation. “When these kids perceive a threat to the status quo, they will go to any lengths to remove it. You started something you were not prepared to finish, but I’m not surprised.” Because he predicted it on day one.

“Okay yeah, I deserve that. I screwed myself,” Jug acknowledges, rubbing his knuckles across his forehead, agitated. “But, this is still messed up. Why should I get suspended for something I didn’t do?”

“Be grateful Weatherbee is only talking suspension and not expulsion,” Evernever reasons.

Jughead slouches in his chair, his anger bleeding into anxious resignation. “When is this going to happen?” How much time does he have left to figure this out on his own? Should he even try?

“Probably by the end of the week. We’re still deliberating,” Edgar discloses. “Be prepared for earlier. For now, I suggest you keep your nose down. Don’t engage with any of the parties involved, especially Betty Cooper. And do not approach Chuck Clayton. Do you understand?”

Before Jughead can offer up his begrudging acceptance, there is a brief but deliberate knock at the door. The office secretary pokes her head into Evernever’s office. “Miss Greely wants a word with you about the agenda on tonight’s faculty meeting.”

Jughead glances behind him and smiles politely, but she responds with a pale imitation laced with not a little derision. He isn’t sure if it is leftover animosity from the independent study debacle or this current rumor chipping away at Jughead’s clean slate.

Jug turns back around and thinks he catches Edgar roll his eyes, but by the time he is fully about-face, the good counselor is thanking Ms. Sales with a cool smile. “I’ll be right there.” Evernever rounds his desk and quietly asks Jughead to stay put for a moment, a firm but reassuring hand on his shoulder as he follows Ms. Sales out into the hallway. Jughead has to force himself not a flinch away from the friendly gesture.

Only once the door closes does Jug bury his face in his hands, fingers pressing into the tension aches above his eyebrows. _If only you’d taken a pause, Forsythe_. He looks up at the leaded glass windows, the poplars starting to weep gold. He feels like he only just started to gain a foothold on his future, on a sense of purpose, but it was only a sense before – Christ, he doesn’t know what he is going to do.

He studies the assortment of puzzles on Evernever’s desktop, mazes with tiny ball bearings, interlocking sets of rings, and an innocuous wooden box if not for the designs. He picks up the box, similar in color to the ones carried by Dilton and Kurtz, an array of red and gold filigree against a black background. He thinks he even spies the suggestions of gargoyles and gryphons in the engravings underneath the filigree. When he searches for an opening, he realizes the box is solid all the way around. He cannot even sense the seams that hold the boards together, and then he recognizes it must be another puzzle, smiling to himself.

The smile sours, though. He might have finally found a bastion of fellow puzzling compatriots.

_You’re a Jones_ , his father reminds him. He wonders, if he makes it through this, if he will have seen it all, the worst this abyss called living could throw at him. 

Glancing behind him, he doesn’t see or hear Mr. Evernever or Ms. Greely. Looking back at the box, he figures there are worse ways to pass his time now that he might have too much of it pretty soon.

He manipulates the box in his hands for a few moments, tilting it one way and then another to test its weight, listening and feeling for any movement inside. Something slides from one end of the box to the other. His fingers search for any give in the box’s faces. A two-inch wide portion of one face slides out from one edge, which allows another to slot partially into its place. He hums in triumph.

It takes him another few minutes to figure out the sequence of slides until he finally removes an entire face of the box and reveals the secret compartment. When a key drops into his lap, he feels a strange sense of déjà vu.

_A dog as big as a bear guards the vault to 314_.

Jughead places the solved puzzle box back on the desktop and peeks behind him one more time, tilting his head toward the door for the sound of Evernever or Ms. Greely. Rounding the desk, he inspects the drawers, the key in his hand. His fingers brush along the shaggy metal fur carved into each of the drawer handles, edging along the snarling maw of dogs that almost look like they could be bears.

He tugs experimentally on each drawer, teasing at some of the locks with the key. Most of the drawers are unlocked, many filled with various office sundries, one with miscellaneous crap confiscated from students. He filches a brand-new looking Zippo and mini air horn. He doesn’t find a locked drawer until he is on his knees on the opposite side of the desk, tugging on the lowermost one the farthest from where he started, of course. Peeking over the desktop one final time to see if Evernever’s shadow is on the other side of the glass, Jug fits the key into the mouth of the dog stuck in a frozen howl, licks his top lip as he twists.

The lock clicks open just as the door to room 314 swings wide. The good counselor doesn’t even feign surprised. “You know curiosity killed the cat, Mr. Jones.”

Jug leaves the key in the lock, standing up only semi-embarrassed. Evernever waves him away from his side of the desk, coming around the opposite side as Jug retakes his seat. Edgar relocks the drawer and places the key in the chest pocket of his blazer. “I’m going to have to find a new hiding place,” Evernever muses to himself, sounding almost tickled by the challenge.

“Hey, um, do you know the game Gryphons and Gargoyles?”

Edgar’s placid blue eyes float up towards him at the mention of the game. “Do you like puzzles, Jughead?”

Jug stuffs his hands in his pockets, fiddling with the Zippo, careful not to set off the air horn. “Sure.”

“You can have this one.” Evernever picks up the wooden puzzle box, offers it across the desk.

Jughead reaches for the box then pauses, his fingers three inches from the open secret compartment. “Are you mad?”

Evernever completes the distance for him, setting the puzzle box in Jug’s hand. “I’m not mad. I’m impressed.”

The box in his lap, he stares down into the secret compartment. “I’m sorry anyway.”

Evernever smiles and shakes his head. “I know about the game. I even played it when I was your age.”

Jughead gestures the puzzle box at him as he puts it back together, resealing the secret compartment. “Is that how you got this?”

“Someone made that for me,” he discloses. “A game master. I won that in a quest.”

“You must have really been into the game,” Jughead infers, finished with closing the box. “This isn’t exactly a simple thing to make.”

Eyebrows raised, Evernever appears more impressed with Jug’s speed at resetting the puzzle box. “We were,” he confirms, sounding wistful as he fiddles with the other puzzles lined up on his desk. “You’re a lot like me, I suspect. We both have overactive imaginations. The game is good for that.”

Jughead pockets the puzzle box and replaces his hands on the chair arms. There are about ten minutes left of PE. “I mean, I’m not that serious about it,” he counters. “Yeah, it’s fun every now and again, but I think some of these kids go a little too overboard.”

Evernever leans back in his seat, one of the mazes in his hands. “What do you mean by that?”

Jughead shrugs. “I don’t know. Some of them like to go off board, like take the game into reality. I think that’s dangerous.”

The good counselor manipulates the maze in one hand, listening to the tiny ball bearings knocking against the walls of the maze as they madly scramble for the exit. “Have you seen this?”

“I think so.”

“What did you see?” Evernever doesn’t glance once to check his work on the maze, his eyes fixed firmly on the soon-to-be suspended sad-sack sitting across from him.

Jughead doesn’t think Evernever had blinked in over a minute and wonders if he got caught up in a staring contest he didn’t know was happening, but he answers him. “It was the night of the midnight manhunt. I went into the church alone.”

“What did you find in the church?”

The good counselor seems to be smothering a secret in the smile fighting around the edges of his mouth. Just as Jughead was starting to warm up to him. _Does everyone at this school have screws loose?_ He wonders privately to himself.

“I don’t know. It’s tough to describe. I tried to get a picture of it, but they didn’t turn out great.”

Evernever frowns. “Come on, Jughead. You’re a writer. Describe it to me.”

“You won’t laugh?” Everyone else laughed at him, Betty included.

Evernever nods, promising he won’t. Two minutes since he blinked. He sinks one of the ball bearings.

“It was – I saw the rib cage first. That’s how tall it was, eye level with a bloody ribcage, all these muddy shrouds,” he starts, holding his hand level with his nose. “There was mud and blood on the ground, too. It had this massive ram’s skull on top with pieces of flesh still attached. And it was hooved, freaking hooved! I didn’t know it was part of the game. I’m still not sure it was, but it’s my best guess. I think someone was playing at being the Gargoyle King, maybe. I don’t know enough about the mythology of the game yet. I just started playing.”

Evernever sinks another ball, and Jughead pauses on the audible clink, swallowing. He’s never gotten this far in the story. “It’s just – there are similarities, the gargoyle, the ram horns, the hooves.” He sighs, feeling crazy. “I don’t know, maybe it’s a stretch.”

“You saw the Gargoyle King on the night of the midnight manhunt?” There isn’t a trace of judgment or disbelief in Evernever’s tone, and it feeds Jughead’s suspicions, unfounded but if there is one thing that has never failed Jughead, it’s his gut.

Jughead laughs at himself, diffusing some of his own tension. “Sometimes I think I really am going crazy,” he confesses breathlessly. “Gargoyles? Really, Jones?”

Evernever ignores Jug’s feigned anxieties, barrels forward with his unblinking interest as he sinks the last ball. “What do you think it was doing there?”

“I don’t know, maybe a hazing ritual. I actually thought it was Chuck or Nick. I followed them into that church, and I ran into that thing instead. I’m still convinced it could have been one of them.”

“You think they were trying to scare someone?”

“Maybe? I wouldn’t put it past them. Hazing rituals have been a problem at this school before. Before this – you know – happened, I was writing a story on them, some of the history of hazing at this school. I found out there was a murder in that church twenty years ago. It was ruled an accident, but it happened the night of the midnight manhunt. Two students were expelled. There weren’t any details beyond that, but you have to agree, it can’t just be a coincidence.”

Evernever shakes the ball bearing loose from their hiding places, resetting the maze. He smiles, shaking his head, and Jug, thinking he might be laughing at him, bristles. “I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you, just your circumstances. Has anyone ever told you you’re a magnet for trouble?”

Yeah, his parents. And Toni. And Sweet Pea. “What’s your point?”

“Nothing, just some food for thought, maybe. Why do you think you get yourself into these predicaments? Have you ever thought about it?”

“People think they can get away with anything because in most cases everyone just goes along for the ride, lets them get away with it because that’s easier, the path of least resistance,” Jughead bites back. “Sure, I get into trouble, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. I get in trouble because I ask the questions everyone else is afraid to ask. I’m not ashamed of that.”

Evernever smiles again, softer this time, and for once Jughead doesn’t feel like he is ignorant of the joke anymore. “I know. That’s what I like about you, Jughead, your unflinching sense of right and wrong.”

* * *

Three more days pass without incident. Each period that passes, Jughead keeps expecting that at any moment the classroom door will swing wide, banging against the wall as the bulls march into the room and drag him to a cartoon paddy wagon. He will grip the bars on the windows, watching the school recede on the horizon, Evernever and Archie and the rest of the students waving him goodbye, Betty under Chuck’s arm the last thing he sees as the paddy wagon disappears to the other side of the Crayola sunset.

He pinches himself every time the classroom door opens. At one point, he thinks his heart stops when a teacher’s aide shows up to grab a student for a dentist’s appointment. He feels slightly dizzy when the aide delivers the innocent pink slip. Glancing at Betty, he is sure his heart will never start again when he meets her green eyes directly, the look as if she can read his thoughts.

The anticipation is killing him. He has half a mind to barrel into Weatherbee’s office and lay his head on the chopping block himself, save Weatherbee and the cops a trip. This – this feels like one big twisted mind game, one gigantic inside joke.

Christ, if only he hadn’t been so narrow-minded from the beginning, he might have anticipated this better. He might have prepared himself better. If he hadn’t been so distracted by the golden twirl of Betty Cooper’s ponytail or the sharp intuition in her meadow green eyes or the soft, private smile she gave him when she read something she liked in one of his stories.

He learned this very concept in freshman English. _Hubris, dumbass_.

Evernever pretty much said it all from day one, in one smile alone. Jughead Jones was going to end up the whole school’s punchline.

It is the end of Friday. He is sitting in English class. It has been over a week since Nick and Chuck’s version of the events that transpired at Cheryl’s end-of-the-summer party got out. He can’t believe it took less than a day for his fall from grace. Not that he really came from a position of grace.

He stares at the ticking clock while Dilton Doiley proofreads his essay on absurdist fiction with a hawk’s eye. He half-assed his own edits on Doiley’s paper because at this point, why bother with the effort.

It is Friday, and he prays for that knock on the door. He has spent the last three days crawling toward the conclusion that anything else would be better than this pointless limbo, thinking about Josef K. waiting an eternity for the outcome of his trial, the powers that be shifting his fate around in dark corners beyond his reach, his comprehension. He would rather know and be done with it. At least then Betty might get some much-needed closure, at least from him.

He immediately scolds himself for the thought. When it seemed his suspension was inevitable, he explained the situation to Archie, who nearly invaded the administration with his own thoughts on the issue. He made the redhead promise to keep a close eye on her, and to keep her as far away from those cretins as he could safely manage. He made Archie swear on his life. Losing his reputation to Chuck and Nick’s subversion is only incidental because in less than a day, it will be beyond his control, and he can only imagine what that power will do for their egos.

The young are entitled to feel a certain measure of invulnerability, but Christ, could it really go that far, Jughead wondered. 

He never thought he would feel this powerless again. After that night in the marsh, he promised himself he wouldn’t let it happen ever again.

Another minute ticks by.

He tries to look at this as just another puzzle to solve, another mystery to unravel, another investigation, but as the big hand inches towards the last bell and closer to his inevitable suspension, Jughead suddenly recognizes this feeling, those final hopeless moments before he ran the gauntlet.

Every day an empty mailbox that he started to wish for anything but that emptiness. Even a rejection would have sufficed because at least that was an answer. He could work with answers, even if they were suboptimal. He was not great at waiting for answers to fill those blank spaces on their own. He was good at finding them himself, by tooth and fucking nail.

Now, he is stuck in this purgatory again, doors closing, decisions out of his control.

Another minute creeps past.

Dilton smacks his shoulder with his proofread draft. “You use too many semi-colons.”

“You don’t know the difference between loose and lose,” Jughead counters, dropping Dilton’s draft back on his desk.

“You keep staring at the clock like it’s a guillotine about to drop.”

Jughead sweeps his notebook and draft into his book-bag. “Fuck you.”

Mrs. Kalinsky glances at Jughead over the lenses of her horn-rim glasses. “Mr. Jones, there are almost ten minutes left until the bell. Don’t you have anything else you could be working on besides disrupting the remainder of class with Mr. Doiley?”

“We finished early, Mrs. Kalinsky,” he returns, setting his book-bag on top of his desk.

“Maybe you missed something on the first read-through,” Mrs. Kalinsky offers good-naturedly. “Or maybe one of the other students can do a second pass for you. It’s always good to have a second opinion.”

Jughead sighs. This never would have happened back in Toledo. The last ten minutes of class on Fridays was basically a reenactment of the conch scene in _Lord of the Flies_. Maybe Toledo would take him back after this bullshit was a couple miles behind him.

“I’ll do it.” She shifts into the empty desk in front of him.

"Thank you, Ms. Cooper," Kalinsky commends, unsurprised Betty would be the first to volunteer. 

Jughead’s heart actually stops. He’s sure of it. Dilton even has the gall to gawk, like watching a car accident in slow-motion.

“If you do mine, too,” she adds, setting her draft on top of his book-bag.

His voice is rough, practically a frog’s croak. “Are you sure?”

She nods, looking at his book-bag expectantly. It’s cute. It’s a dream. He almost leans over to Dilton and asks for another pinch because his must not be working anymore. “Draft, Jug.”

He slides his notebook back out of his bag on autopilot, handing her the edited draft with numb fingers. She gestures at her draft still and silent and like a loaded gun on his desk. “You have to do mine, too.”

“Right,” he says dumbly, caught up in her green eyes this near, that it’s been days since he could see them so close, that he never imagined he would get the opportunity again. “Of course.”

He gingerly picks up her draft, flipping the cover page, and something drifts onto his lap. He closes his legs quickly to stop it from falling onto the ground, a small sliver of paper pinched between his thighs. He glances up at her, but she feigns ignorance, perusing his essay while nibbling on the end of her purple pen. Swallowing once, he slides the note out from between his legs, wondering if maybe it's extra edits from her other English partner, but it is her handwriting, purple and swirling cursive. 

_Meet me in the Blue and Gold after school_.


	6. see no evil II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _From the bottom of my heart_   
>  _He was looking all over me_   
>  _You take me and I’ll take you_   
>  _You kill him and I’ll kill her_   
>  _Swear it wasn’t meant to be_   
>  _Swear I didn’t mean it_   
>  _Kiss me_   
>  _Kiss me in the shadow of a doubt_
> 
> Shadow of a Doubt by Sonic Youth

Sometimes Jughead really wants to tell his overactive imagination to take a day off. It breeds too much fear, like rubbing sandpaper on his nerves already sparking with a dozen less then optimistic scenarios prior to Betty dropping the note in his lap.

When the eighth period bell rang, Betty returned his draft without any further direction. She plucked her essay out of his dumb hands, the essay he failed to peer edit, and retreated back to her seat to collect her bag without another word.

He barely glanced at his own essay draft, stuffing it into his book-bag and scrambling after her.

Out in the hallway, she fell into step with Charles, hugging her older brother’s arm close as she launched into an animated retelling of some story, something about rabbits or gremlins. Jughead couldn’t hear it very well as he tried to weave through the crowded hallway and catch her. But, she was smiling. Charles was laughing. It looked genuine, and it looked like it was going nowhere near the _Blue and Gold_.

Now, he hides in the classroom across the hall from the school newspaper.

Sure as shit and not Shinola, the note is in his hands. _Meet me in the Blue and Gold_. It was her handwriting. Few people wrote in purple pen. Betty also wrote in surprisingly mess but distinctive cursive, strange for a girl that looked like she waltzed straight from a Sears catalogue, but Jughead had little doubt it had come from her.

Seated on the edge of the teacher’s desktop, he stakes out the office through the cracked door, waiting for Betty to show up, waiting for anybody to show up.

His imagination has conjured up all sorts of possibilities and reached the worst and most logical conclusion. Instead of being suspended, he is going to get his ass kicked, and Betty was luring him to the _Blue and Gold_ so he could get a final taste of this school’s particular method of dealing with the unwanted and the unpopular, a cherished memory to remember them all by for the trip back to Riverdale.

As he considers his options, he hears taps advancing down the hallway. One set of feet, he thinks, listening for an accompanying pair of heavier footfalls, anything so his imagination can win their ongoing bet, the bet they’ve had going for the better part of Jug’s short, unfortunate life. His imagination assures him there is one thing he can always count on, and that’s the surety his Jones bad luck will boomerang back around to hack him at the knees.

Jughead, on the other hand, is a reluctant optimist. He never shuts himself off from the possibility that if he prepares himself well enough, his perfect opportunity will come, even if precedent has shown he has a fifty-fifty chance of mucking it up. He knows bad things could happen, that they have a good chance of happening, but there has been enough good in his life that he holds out hope more is on the way. He just needs to prepare himself better. They make a good pair, though. Jughead hopes for the best, and his imagination expects the worst. This is how he prepares himself.

The set of feet presents itself as none other than Betty Cooper in the flesh. She glances around the hallway before she walks into the _Blue and Gold_ office alone.

Jughead refolds the note and tucks it into his back pocket. _Shit or get off the pot, Jones_. He hops off the desk.

Jug left his book-bag in his locker, so he could make a quick escape if need be. Righting his beanie, he checks the hallway, looks both ways like a good boy scout, before he crosses the short distance to the school newspaper. He twists the door handle experimentally, his ear peeled for any movement on the other side, and his heart leaps up into his throat when he realizes the door is unlocked.

With the audible click of the latch bolt, Jug opens the door a fraction, and his mind ushers through a million different contingency plans, the nearest emergency exit, whether he can recall if the windows open. Inside each tentative nudge of the door, his brain snaps a scenario into place, anticipating the fist that will be there to greet him on the other side of the frosted glass.

“It’s just me, Jughead,” she assures him, her voice small and distant, maybe apologetic, if he reads into it.

As if burned, he snatches his hand back. It is Friday, yet he can smell concentrated azaleas coming from Dr. Benzene’s prep room, like the ones growing outside the school library.

“I won’t bite,” she promises him, a little closer now.

Betty opens the door the rest of the way to show him the room is empty of anyone but her. Framed by the jamb, she looks lost at sea against the lonely backdrop of the _Blue and Gold_ office, a picture of neglect with its dusty shelves and bare corkboards. He had so many plans to fill it up with something meaningful. He hoped to make it an inner sanctum for himself, never mind that it was hers first. Then, as he got to know her, he thought maybe it could be their refuge.

He doesn’t know where his voice has gone because what comes out of his mouth sounds a lot like that frog from English class. “You wanted me to meet you here?” Like she needs the reminder.

She nods and moves aside to let him pass, holding the door between her hands like she is about to pray, her forehead against the short edge.

“Are you sure?” He needs to know. His feet feel bolted to the floor.

“Get in here, Jug,” she urges, a hint of frustration in her tone, reaching for the Canterbury emblem on his sweater, and he swivels his torso aside to avoid her hand, slipping through the small space between the door and herself before she can lay a hand on him.

He scans the room quickly for another body, behind the desks, the corkboards, the door in Betty’s hands.

“Did you think I was lying?” She asks, shutting the door behind her. The closed door sets him further on edge, and he tosses the question back at her.

Her face, her shoulders, her entire upper body sinks with what might be contrition. “You want to know the truth?”

She says it so quietly Jughead feels the need to close the space between them, bring her within whispering distance, but his brain handily wins the war against his feelings. His brain has seen far less abuse over the past week than his feelings, so it takes point here without a peep of contradiction from his bruised feelings. He maintains a strict distance of five feet from Betty, enough to establish plausible deniability if anyone were to walk in.

“Betty, speak up,” he prompts, attempting a gentle tone, but she starts anyway, pink sweeping up her neck and into the apples of her cheeks. “I can’t hear you,” he clarifies.

Some of her embarrassment melts off her cheeks with his excuses, but her fists remain clenched at her sides. She fights through her apprehension, and he feels a flush of guilt that she experiences even one iota of discomfort from this whole exchange. Yet, she finds her voice, admitting a little louder, “I didn’t know what to think.”

He stuffs his hands in his pockets and leans back against the empty bookshelf. “So, what changed your mind?”

“Who changed my mind,” she corrects him. Jughead wonders if Archie really went to bat for him and why Jug was lucky enough to land the last decent guy in Canterbury as a roommate. He shuffles a point in his hope column while his imagination sulks. Then, Betty discloses, “Veronica has a very different version of that night’s events.”

That is well and truly out of left field. “What did Ms. Lodge have to say about that night?” He prods further, ramping down the incredulity. He is painfully curious about the view of this world through the eyes of Veronica Lodge.

“She said she was eighty percent sure you didn’t do it.”

Betty takes a step towards him, and his gaze lands on her Mary Janes, patent black and shiny buckles. With his glance, she looks down at her own feet like she might have missed a spot polishing them. He pulls his hands out of his pockets and folds his arms across his middle, thinking she is cute and dangerous at the same time. She takes the hint, though, stepping back and seating herself on the edge of the desk, maintaining that safety distance of five feet.

Jughead avoids looking at her. This sounds too good to be true. He laughs short and bitter. “Oh, eighty? Generous of her.” He scratches his chin, trying not to smile mean. “Where does the guilty twenty percent come from? Do I come across as a guy who would do that?”

Betty rests her fists on the desktop. “No,” she confesses. “That’s what confused me.” Her fists relax, and the he sees red in her nailbeds.

“Jesus, Betty,” he shouts, striding forward to grab her hands. “What the hell?” There are fresh red smiles in her palms.

She snatches her hands back, curling her fingers to hide the cuts. “It’s fine. This happens all the time.”

He captures her hands again, and her sharp inhale catches him off guard, like he burned her. Her fingers uncurl slowly, palms turned up like an Oliver Twist plea for more, and he wants to press his lips to the broken parts. “Betty, we can open the door if you want,” he tells her. “Don’t feel like you have to force yourself.” He gently closes her hands and lowers them before releasing her, feeling like a jerk for grabbing her, for making her feel like she has to do this to herself, for crowding her space. He needs to keep his shit together. “I’m gonna get a first aid kit.”

“Jug,” she murmurs now that they are within whispering distance. He meets her eyes, feels his chest get tight at the unease he sees, the uncertainty in her moue. “Tell me what happened that night.”

Instead of talking about that night, he asks her, “Do you ever think about what your word it worth?”

He can tell she has, that her voice here is swallowed up by the expectations of others. And Jughead’s was swept under a rug of knee-jerk prejudice. He doesn’t ask her to make her feel worse for him. She has no business feeling any sort of sorry for him. He asks because he knows she will understand, and he feels it in the affectionate brush of her thumb along his palm.

“If Veronica hadn’t set the record straight, what would you have done?” She feels closer than he thought, close enough he can smell her perfume, geraniums and bergamot, like springtime.

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, sounding lost. He stares down at their linked hands, more certainty in her touch. He senses her searching green eyes on his face and wonders what she finds that makes that certainty grow. 

She sighs. “God, I feel so stupid.”

He gives her hand a light scolding tug. “It wasn’t your fault, Betty.”

“My mother always told me,” she starts, trailing off, turning away from him, and he feels the certainty bleeding out of her touch, a self-conscious roll of her eyes towards the sky.

He tightens his grip, not too much to aggravate the cuts but enough to snap her out of this descent into wrong-headed culpability, seeing all the little blame-seeking missiles taking aim at every one of her insecurities. That she could have chosen a more modest dress. That she should have declined drinks from two boys she had known since grade school.

“Your mother can go to hell,” he barks. “What happened wasn’t your fault. At all. It’s not even on Veronica or Archie, okay. It’s,” he stops, waving at the door as proxy for her offenders. “It’s all them.”

He doesn’t know if any of it quite sinks in, but he can sense the prelude to a smile in her eyes. That morsel of mirth in her eyes cracks across her mouth first, and she looks away to release it shyly towards the rear windows. Something gives in his chest, and he really hopes some of this rings true for her. He would never force her to be okay with what happened, but he wants her to know that he will be here if she is not. He will be here if she wants him to be. With this thought and with what she knows now, he feels the need to ask if she is okay.

Her smile fades instantly. “Did they do anything to me?”

He starts to draw his hand away, unsure whether it would be bad form to touch her while they talk about this, but she fastens herself to him, inserting her other hand into the equation to trap his own.

“I – um,” he starts, figuring out the best way to word it, the best way to sugar coat it, when he hears her ask him to just _be honest_. He hears the tinge of disappointment waiting in the wings, waiting for him to throw the rug over the whole ugly business like everyone else in her life.

“Betty, honestly, they didn’t get to do very much before I interrupted.”

She chews her bottom lip, dissatisfied with his answer. “What did they get to do, Jughead?”

He knows the words, but they don’t feel right. None of this feels right. Then, he thinks, it isn’t supposed to feel right.

She huffs. “Then, how did you know what they were going to do?” Ever the journalist, needing all the facts.

“The way they talked about you,” he explains. “Nick admitted to drugging you. And he.” Jughead realizes it is more difficult to get out with her standing so close, with her touching him because all he wants to do is hunt Nick and Chuck down and enact his mother’s special brand of redress. His mother had an extensive toolbox in that department, some tools he inherited. But when he looks down at her, he feels the unfairness of it all, and he knows that she needs to hear this.

He starts over. He tells her about Nick and Chuck putting her on the bed, about Nick touching her, admitting to slipping something in her drink, and trying to convince Chuck to play along, something that sounded like it was not the first time they had done this. Then, he details Chuck and Nick on the bed, both of them touching her, “That’s when I interrupted. When it became pretty clear what was going to happen. Archie and Veronica came up shortly after.” He stops there, gauging her reaction.

Betty doesn’t say anything while he offers his report of the events. It almost feels impersonal, like he is pitching a story to his editor because she reacts in much the same way. She looks out the back windows, the array of maples lighting the room in reds and golds and oranges. It makes her green eyes stand out. At the end, she nods, appearing to digest this new information, but Jughead catches the trace of hurt creasing her brow, a hint of grief pulling at the corners of her mouth. He isn’t sure it will go down so well. He doesn’t expect it to, and she looks almost sick.

She closes her eyes and looks away. He feels the tension in her hands but none of her grip, and he wonders if this is how Betty Cooper normally operates in this strange world, with these strange people, under these unfamiliar circumstances. If she binds this all up inside of her, a set of coils and springs in her psyche specially designed to carry the strain of every anxious thought, each transgression and social slight. He wonders how far it extends, this special reserve of stress-storing coping mechanisms, and what happens when she runs out of bandwidth.

Then, it disappears. The rigidity in her hands melts away, and she turns back towards him with a glimmer of amusement in her eyes, like that tension was never there at all. “I don’t know if you know, but you cracked one of Nick’s molars. That’s some punch,” she commends.

He searches her eyes for a second, and she looks back with a silent plea for him to let it go. He doesn’t want to because he worries that is what Betty Cooper does, she lets it go. She turns a blind eye because that is the standard operating procedure in this place, that is what she has been conditioned to do. Jughead’s mother was all about an eye for an eye because at least her enemies were blind, too.

He snorts, letting her fingers play over his own. “I didn’t punch him,” Jughead corrects, smiling even though he barely feels it. “I hit him with the Bible.”

She laughs out loud. It comes from deep inside her body, and she accidentally yanks on his hand, drawing him close enough to see every definition to her laughter, every smile line, the satisfied spark in her eyes that looks at him like she is seeing him through an entirely different lens. He thinks for a moment he might do anything to keep her looking at him just like that. Then, he reminds himself that he was going to take care of Chuck and Nick on his own from the get-go. That plan doesn’t have to change. Maybe it is safer that she stays away from Chuck and Nick.

Betty sobers after a beat. Her hand releases his to trip up his sleeve and across his chest. She straightens the collar of his button-up peeking up through his sweater. “Do you think that’s enough punishment for poor Nick?” She wonders even though there is a hell-bent edge to her gaze now when she looks at him. He was already retracing his steps for how to bring down Nick and Chuck that he has to backtrack to the unexpected shift in her demeanor.

Betty suddenly scoffs at herself. “To think I almost said yes to homecoming with Chuck.” Jug’s gut clenches with the thought.

He watches the wheels turning in her eyes while she pats his collar thoughtfully. “You know, I never told him no.” Her gaze sharpens with resolve, that same look she got when she skimmed his writing portfolio, when he proposed a deeper dive into the Jason Blossom memorial. He has had that look, too. He knows that look, like she can smell blood in the water. That was the Betty Cooper he liked best.

Jughead swallows roughly and the frog doesn’t go down when he croaks, “So?”

Anticipation roils in his gut, that rollercoaster feeling rising again. He tries to remember if anyone ever excited him as much as Betty Cooper when she got that predatory gleam in her eye, like she could taste the promise of a good, meaty story just around the corner. He wants to taste it in her mouth, too. He wants to kiss her.

“Juggie?” There is a tickled mischief in her tone, and it does just that to his insides, sends a million little somethings tickling up into his throat. “Do you know what a honeypot is?”

Everything inside of him goes absolutely still when he thinks, _you’re my dream girl, Betty Cooper_. Instead, he promises her they will strategize after he finds a first aid kit.

* * *

Betty tells him they need to keep it a secret that she knows, so they have to playact hating each other in public. _Just until we’re done_ , she promises him, and he nods without hesitation. Feeling wrapped around her finger, he could not care less.

At breakfast the next day, he pastes a counterfeit glower on his face while he watches her approach Chuck’s table, and it fools Archie, no problem. But then, he thinks a little meanly that it isn’t really a tall order.

Betty puts on a good show, sitting next to Chuck instead of across from him, touching his shoulder, flashing those captivating green eyes up at him. Chuck swallows every corrupted spoonful of sugar. Her act is believable enough for Jughead to feel a small lick of jealousy in his chest, telling himself it is just a performance, that it won’t hold a candle to the promise of Nick and Chuck’s public annihilation.

However, while Cheryl goes home for the weekends, Veronica is very much present to witness Betty’s convincing bit of social theatre, and Jughead can read in an instant she is not comfortable with the proceedings. Then again, Veronica doesn’t know she is an extra in a play.

The sudden look of consternation on Archie’s face sets Jughead on edge, and he glances around quickly like maybe he missed something. Then, his roommate asks him, “Why didn’t they expel you?”

“What?”

“I could have sworn you said they were going to expel you.”

“They were going to suspend me, Archie,” Jughead correct him gently.

“You weren’t suspended,” Archie points out, waving his hand at Jug’s obvious appearance in the cafeteria. “Did something happen? Veronica was weird this morning, and Betty won’t talk to me.” Apparently, they have not fooled Archie as well as Jughead initially thought.

Jug’s gaze flickers to Veronica seated with a couple other girls a few tables away, Cheryl’s backup cronies Tina and Ginger. Veronica’s hawk brown eyes are trained squarely on the Betty and Chuck show taking place on the other side of the cafeteria. She looks about a one-banana, two-banana away from marching over there and either scratching Chuck’s eyes out or dragging Betty away to apply for a restraining order.

Jughead suddenly considers the merits of folding Veronica into their plan. Even though Chuck is thoroughly distracted by Betty’s false moon eyes, Veronica has full capacity to derail all their efforts with one word. Hell, if Chuck glanced at Veronica now, the entire scheme could crumble. Jughead thanks his lucky stars Nick St. Claire also goes home for the weekends. Then, Jughead watches Betty lean a certain way to draw Chuck’s gaze towards her and as far away from accidentally catching Veronica’s evil eye. Betty knows. He smiles. Of course she knows.

Then, Jug thinks, if Betty is aware, then she is deliberately excluding Veronica for some reason. _Christ_. He really hopes it isn’t leftover pettiness from whatever the two have been squabbling about since the beginning of the school year, that three-way awkwardness between Betty, Veronica, and Archie. He wants to believe Betty would have a better reason than lingering resentment towards Veronica and Archie. It shouldn’t be likely, given Veronica finally told Betty about the night of Cheryl’s party. He would think that disclosure merits at least a détente, but then Jughead cannot pretend to ever fully comprehend the internal politics of the autocracy that makes up Cheryl, Betty, and Veronica. _Just asker her later, Jones_ , he tells himself. _But ask soon_.

They just have to get through the week. The dance is on Friday. Betty and Jughead have the entire five days to refine the plan, gather their supplies, put all the pieces in place.

Veronica snaps her plastic fork in half, and even through the din of the cafeteria, it sounds like a gunshot to Jug’s ears. She is either spitting angry at Betty for disregarding her warnings about Chuck, betrayed that Betty might not have believed her, or maybe, and Jughead really hopes on this one, the lightbulb will flicker on any moment now, and Veronica will spot the ruse on her own, back off on her own, let Betty handle this on her own.

At that moment, Betty finishes with Chuck and beelines for Veronica’s table. He hopes it is for damage control. As soon as Betty takes her seat, Cheryl’s alternates scatter to another table. Archie glances back at them, reads the tea leaves instantly while Jughead is trying to interpret Veronica’s dark expression. His roommate turns back around with a groan. “Well, I guess I’m getting a lecture later.”

“What?” Jughead raises his eyebrows at him, trying not to gawk at the exchange between Betty and Veronica. “What do you mean?”

Archie stirs his oatmeal while he pouts, “Whenever those two fight, I’m bound to get an earful from one of them later. It’s how they work it out.”

“By using you as a punching bag?” Jughead glances quickly at the girls when Archie sulks directly into his breakfast bowl. Veronica pinches the bridge of her nose while Betty pleads her case.

“I prefer go-between or peaceful mediator,” Archie defends. “But, yeah, pretty much so they can get their shots in without actually having to throw a punch at each other.”

When Jughead attempts to get another bead on the conversation between Betty and Veronica, he gets an eyeful of Chuck Clayton taking a seat next to Archie. “Hey, Jughead, surprised to see you’re still here. You’re like a – damn, what’s difficult to get rid of? Oh yeah, like a cockroach.”

Archie’s mood sours another shade darker, and Jughead cannot recall him ever looking as borderline rabid as he does now. “Chuck,” the redhead warns, the color of his cheeks getting close to the color of his hair.

Chuck ignores him, focusing his affections on Jughead. “Yeah, I saw you looking at Betty earlier.”

“I was just moving my eyes around, Chuck.” The moment it leaves his mouth he knows it is a sad-sack excuse. He knows he should play the sad-sack. That is his part in this charade.

Chuck snorts, laughing at him. “Well, cool, man,” he acknowledges, affecting nonchalance, but then, “But, here’s the thing. I catch you looking at my girl again, I will fucking lay you out.”

Archie seizes on that, opening his mouth to reel, but Chuck snaps at him, “Back off, Andrews, you missed your chance.”

He turns back to Jug, pointing a finger. “Trust I’ll do what I say. And you know what they’re gonna do?” He asks, shifting his gaze around the cafeteria, smirking back at the smattering of Lookie-Lous. “Not a damn thing. I could knock your teeth out; no one would lift a finger. Except you, Andrews,” he reasons. “But, I’d level you, too.”

He steals the blueberry muffin off Jughead’s breakfast tray. “So,” he begins, and then takes a massive bite out of the top before tossing it back onto Jug’s plate, finishing his threat through a mouthful of muffin. “You keep your nose in your fucking casserole.” He gestures at Jug’s cold leftovers. “And away from Betty. Understand?”

Jughead bites his tongue but nods noncommittally. “You got it, Chuckles.”

Chuck grins and nods back, like they are right friends. “Great. I’m glad you’re sticking around, Juggles. You keep things interesting.” He raps the tabletop with his knuckles, standing up. “At ease, gentlemen.” Then, he strides off back towards the table of on-looking jocks who look moderately disappointed no blood was spilled. 

Jughead pours the rest of his orange juice on his plate, soaking the bitten muffin. Archie gives Chuck one last dirty look before swiveling back to Jughead. “Screw him, man. Look, I’ll talk to Betty, okay?”

“Archie,” Jug flares. He flashes his palms at him, an appeal to just pump the brakes for a second. “Don’t worry about it. Really.”

“It’s just.” Archie has that kicked puppy look again. It makes Jughead feel like a jerk. “I know you kind of had a crush on her, and she really shouldn’t be hanging around that guy. I – damn it.” He groans, throwing his hands up. “I can’t stand it. My dad is always saying be the bigger man, but someone needs to just end that guy. Give him a taste, you know.”

“Don’t worry, Arch,” Jug assures his roommate. “Karma finds a way.”

* * *

On Monday, he sidelines Veronica before chemistry. He tries to do it subtly, but every student that filters through the door ogles them without an ounce of discretion. Veronica fires off a few dirty looks and a sneer like a dare before cutting to Jughead with an exhale of exasperation and an imperious _so what_.

He stammers through the openings of a _thank you_ , but she cuts him off, “Save your thanks for someone who cares, Galahad. Archie told me they were going to expel you.” 

That raises an eyebrow. Even though he wasn’t going to be expelled, just suspended. _Jesus, Archie._ “You have a conscience.” He states this tentatively, almost like a question.

Veronica glares at him and speaks slowly, out of politeness, just in case Jughead struggles to follow. “Of course I do. I’m not soulless, you hobo.”

Jughead clutches his chest in mock gratitude. “What did I do to deserve your mercy, your majesty?”

“I didn’t do it for you,” she snipes, checking her swatch, a deep plum band with a bronze face to match her lipstick and nail polish. “That cretin gave himself away when he tried to blame you. And he had the gall to ask Betty to homecoming. Fat chance.”

Then, Jughead asks the question that has been burning inside him since Friday. “How did you know I didn’t do it?”

Veronica finally looks him in the eye, and he can see how she and Betty could get along, that same shrewd, scrutinizing eye like she is peeling back every one of Jughead’s facades, cutting the fat out from underneath every self-deprecating joke, each evasive change in topic. He shifts awkwardly on his heels under her gaze, and winning, she skims one manicured nail along the corner of mouth to catch some nonexistent smudge of lipstick. “Because Veronica Lodge is a good judge of character.”

Jug’s thoughts skid to a stop. Veronica Lodge just paid him a bonafide compliment. He wishes he had gotten it on tape. He should get it on the record, write a front-page fluff piece on this once-in-a-lifetime miracle. Betty would never believe it, let alone publish it.

“Besides,” she adds. “The timeline didn’t make sense. I saw her talking to Chuck and Nick in the kitchen. You went upstairs way before she did, and I saw them go up with her. But, I was distracted by Archie.” Her mouth suddenly snaps shut, and she looks mildly embarrassed like she didn’t mean to say the last part.

Two for two, Jug thinks, earning a Veronica Lodge stamp of approval and a rare glimpse at her flustered. He nearly wants to pinch himself; he must be dreaming. Or leave town before she puts a hit out on him. He can see her anger simmering, frustration with herself and probably him by default for existing, for hearing her misstep, so he soft-pedals to ease the tension. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Her ire sparks anyway. “I know, dumbass.” Shifting her hair over her shoulder, Veronica turns that fox nose up towards the ceiling.

She tries to hide it, but Jughead got a peek of it that night of the party, and his image of Veronica has not changed much since. She feels responsible for what happened to Betty. Per the rumor mill, Veronica stole Archie from Betty. Jug doesn’t know the whole story, but he doesn’t think that begins to cover even an inch of the truth. He is also starting to believe it isn’t remotely accurate either.

Archie made a choice, and it wasn’t Betty. Though Jughead cannot fathom how Archie could choose Veronica over Betty, he would not fault Archie for making his choice. And from his point of view, Archie has not wavered on his decision, has not strung Betty along, and Veronica has attempted not to ice her out. Jughead knows what that looks like, and he definitely knows how that feels.

Maybe Jug was too quick on the draw of judgment with these kids. He missed key details on the first pass.

These three have been tiptoeing around each other for the last month, and while at first, Jughead thought it was Betty trying to be considerate of Archie and Veronica’s feelings, respecting the boundaries around their new relationship, he thinks now it was all three of them working too hard at being considerate, careful of flat-tiring each other’s emotional heels. Labor Day weekend was a perfect example. Archie making the effort to bridge the gap, playing the lovable middleman for Veronica and Betty. Betty making up excuses to let Veronica and Archie enjoy their time as a couple, maybe to save herself from some of that hurt, from being forever relegated to the background.

Veronica and Archie giving Betty too much space at Cheryl’s party. Betty overcompensating with Chuck and Nick. Veronica and Archie protecting Betty from what happened the night of the party. Maybe for Veronica it was also to protect herself because he can see it on her face right now, the guilt and blame eating its way through her pride. Responsibility because she saw Betty go up with Chuck and Nick and perhaps she also saw that Betty was not in the best state that night. She followed up, though. She didn’t stay downstairs and let the events play themselves out to end in inevitable tragedy. Something worse might have happened because Jughead knows he probably wasn’t going to win that fight. Veronica, in her own way, did take responsibility. She went up those stairs. And when push came to shove, she told Betty what happened. She didn’t let Jughead fall under the bus.

Jug really only has a few takeaways from all this. Veronica Lodge is not a monster. Archie wants to do right by both his girlfriend and his oldest friend. And these three really don’t want to stop being friends. Jug knows he waltzed right into the middle of the most awkward love triangle since he ended up Toni’s backup booty call when she was on the outs with Peaches, which if he thinks about it, that was definitely worse than this. However, unlike the shit-show with Toni and Peaches, these three are at least open to mending their friendship. At the heart of all three, they believe it is something worth preserving, despite any romantic entanglements. Jughead laughs at himself, wondering how he always ends up being the weird wrench in these situations, but maybe unlike that disaster with Toni and Peaches, he might not be the wrench so much as the salve. If he is lucky enough.

It is something he didn’t spot on the first pass, and it was not something he expected to find here, which he can admit is one of his faults. He misjudged Veronica.

“I think,” he starts, and though the mask of antipathy remains firmly in place, the sees the hint of insecurity in Veronica’s eyes, the very real worry that he will confirm all her worst fears about herself, that she is a horrible person, a terrible friend, that she betrayed Betty and left her to the wolves, that she is the root cause of all this. “You’re a really good friend, Veronica. Betty is lucky to have you in her corner.”

Veronica predictably scoffs, and it feels like they are rehearsing a scene in a play. “Whatever, Jones,” she sighs, flipping her hair again. “Nick and Chuck think they own this school.” She feigns checking her nail polish, but her shrewd eyes cut up at him. For someone so shot, she manages to bring him down to her level with one sharp look. “Guess what, Juggles? I do.” The tardy bell rings, and she leaves him in the hallway feeling like he just got knifed and didn’t even know it.

* * *

The barren hallways always feel like the first scenes of a horror movie after the final bell rings, but he follows Betty into the east wing of the main building anyway. The impression is only amplified by her withholding the purpose behind their little adventure. He thought they were going to sketch out the plan for homecoming, but the moment he walked into the _Blue and Gold_ , she disentangled him from his book-bag and pulled him out of the office.

“Betty,” he hisses. If anyone saw them together, the whole plan could fall through. She was barely able to convince Veronica to keep quiet about it.

Betty swivels to hush him, pressing one prim index to her lips. When she pivots back around, her ponytail swings side to side like a lure on a hook. It agitates him. He doesn’t feel allowed to touch her when they are out in the open.

She leads him down another hallway, which, if he recalls, mostly houses the computer science and visual arts side of the school. When their feet land in front of the audio-visual room, he quirks a brow at her.

“Evidence,” she explains simply.

He parrots the word back at her.

“We’re going to film it,” she reveals, reaching into her ponytail and producing a bobby pin.

“Wait, really?”

She nods and kneels down before the door. He watches her dig around in her skirt pocket for a small nail file, which she then jiggles into the lock. She follows it up with a more nuanced entry of the bobby pin. When the lock gives a few moments later, Jug whistles his admiration. “Color me impressed, Cooper.”

Betty slides the bobby pin back into her hair and pokes him in the belly with the nail file. “I have layers, Jones.”

“Got a criminal streak in you?”

She hides her smile as she stands up, brushing the bottom of her skirt. He wants to see the pink she gets in her cheeks every time he pays her compliment. It is turning into one of his favorite pastimes.

He holds the door open for her, but before she can escape into the room, disappear into the labyrinthine shelves of archived reels and tapes, he kicks the door closed and grabs her wrist. Her tickled laugh fills him like a balloon, and he grounds himself against her to keep his feet on dry land, pressing her back against the door.

“You’re not going to treat me with kid gloves, are you?” She asks when he hesitates, leaning over her with his hands resting in neutral territory against the door.

The room smells like the projection booth at the Sundance Kid drive-in. It smells like longing, longing for things he lost in the dumpster fire of his life, yet the smell of her overrides any pinch of nostalgia with the encouraging embrace of possibility. That is what she smells like to him, possibility, the stuff of living, new and fresh like springtime. It is jarring to a kid like Jughead who spent the better part of his life under his mother’s thumb, rubbing shoulders with her less-than-savory, merry band of thugs and dealers, raised in Toledo’s underbelly. Betty smells like the world coming back to life.

“Do you want me to treat you with kid gloves?” He wants it to be her decision, though. He needs it. She has final say.

She sucks her teeth. “I swear, if you ask me one more time if I’m okay, I’m going to silent treatment you into your first year of law school, Jones.” She twists her fingers up in the front of his sweater, picking at the knit. “You’re as bad as Archie sometimes.”

“You think I’m going to be a lawyer,” he muses, smothering a smile.

“You do have a strange preoccupation with serving justice, Jones,” she infers, flashing her eyes up at him, sucking her bottom lip in between her teeth. He feels played, like she sneak-thieved his heart in the dead of night at some point in the last month, cast some spell to bring him to heel, to kneel because that’s what he feels like doing right now, dropping to his knees and offering to put his head up her skirt or just really anything she wants. Her call.

One of his hands migrates to her jaw, fingers bracing along the back of her neck. He tilts her chin toward him. “I’m going to kiss you,” he informs her, part bid for permission but also brash declaration. 

She smirks at him like a challenge, pressing her palms into his stomach. Jughead gives her one more moment to call it off, tell him she isn’t ready, but then her lips part in anticipation, and his mouth comes crashing down.

She sucks in a quick breath like he is the first wave of a tsunami rushing in, and he does, rushing in like a fool. He wraps an arm around her waist to draw her entire body against him, trapping her between himself and the door. Her hands escape, arms looping up along his shoulders, clinging to him like a spider monkey. He feels one knock his beanie off, her smile against his lips when he groans annoyed, more teeth when he groans for an entirely different reason as her fingers sift through his hair, nails gliding, pleasure sparking along the back of his neck and down his shoulders.

“You really like that stuff don’t you,” he mumbles, abandoning her lips to trail across her jawline.

She laughs, spreading her fingers in his hair, cradling his head while his mouth sucks a mark under her right ear. “I like,” she starts, falters when he nudges his knee between her legs, slotting his thigh against her core. Her small keen makes him worried he moved too fast too soon, but he feels her palm hard on the back of his neck, her thighs tensing along his own. “I like,” she tries again, and he feels it, the subtle rock of her hips against him. “That I’m one of the lucky few who gets to see it.”

“Still feels like kid gloves to you?” He whisper-wonders against her lips, and she shakes her head quickly no, breathless like her head just broke the surface of the water after a deep-dive. “This okay?”

She flicks him on the ear. “Jughead, I’ll tell you if it’s not.”

He bobbles his head from side-to-side, mimicking her habit. She puffs her cheeks in a pout, motioning to flick him on the ear again. He dodges out of the way, ducks his head to hide his face under her chin, peppering her neck in kisses, a tender nip at the mark he left just behind her ear.

“Jug,” she beckons softly. He _hmms_ in response, drunk on the smell of her perfume, the smell of her. It reminds him of being cozy and warm, like that first sunny day when it really feels like spring has arrived, like falling asleep in the grass.

Betty repeats his name, and he feels her hand find his own, peeling it off the back of her neck. His mouth releases her neck, and he is about to apologize, about to let her go completely when she directs his hand southward. She searches his eyes that this is alright, that she has not misread him, or that she is asking too much. He wants to say it isn’t his uncertainty he is worrying about.

She tilts her hips back, guiding his hand up under her skirt. At the first brush of his fingertips against the soft cotton of her panties, he cannot help the incredulous whisper, _oh fuck_.

“Is this okay?” She whispers back, searching his face, sensing a misstep. He shakes his head dumbly, inhales roughly as she focuses his fingers on the damp spot, presses them into the soft, giving flesh. The heat he feels underneath the cotton is like a silent invitation.

“I’m going to touch you,” he warns her, and her look of confusion is quickly replaced with awe when he slips his fingers underneath her panties, sliding them experimentally through her folds. It is an overload of sensation, and she cries out softly, her hips jolting back into the door. He murmurs a _sorry_ but keeps touching her, getting her used to the feeling.

When he presses two fingers to her clit and gently massages back and forth, her head falls against his shoulder, hands tangling up in his sweater. “Holy shit.” He thinks foul language looks good on her. He wonders how many curse words he can draw out of her in this session alone.

Jug senses her need to close her thighs around his hand, so he nudges his knee between her legs, gently kicks her left foot wider. He applies more pressure, working her clit between his index and middle finger, drinking up every dazed sigh and needy whimper. She clings to his shoulders, rocking her hips against his hand.

Jughead purposefully keeps his own hips as far away from her as possible. If she looked down right now, she would probably see him tenting his uniform trousers, but she buries her face against his neck, pressing messy kisses into his throat while he works her into a puddle. 

Her mouth humid and hot against his ear, she divulges, “I’ve never done this before.” He feels her teeth worrying his skin, a whine sharp in his ear.

  
“Juggie.” He gives her a small nod that he heard her. “Can you?” Her small hand touches his braced along her lower back. “Can you touch me here?” Betty prompts, escorting his hand underneath her uniform shirt, the buttons straining. She hurriedly unbuttons her shirt, and he cannot help glancing down to see the color and design of her bra, her perfect breasts cradled in lavender satin.

He shoves his hand up underneath one of the cups, folding his palm over her warm breast, feeling her nipple pebble against his life line. Her heady inhale and stuttered exhale makes his gut clench and unclench. Her fingers are in his hair again, twisting and tugging in time with his strokes between her legs. She pushes her chest into his hand and practically purrs with _how good this feels_.

He concurs, an unexpected but wholeheartedly welcome surprise. Not exactly how he thought the afternoon was going to go. He is a little concerned he might be out of practice, but she presses herself against his hand, responding to each intentional stroke with a whimper, a moan, a small beg that makes his balls feel heavy and achy. He will need to find a bathroom after this or something. Soon. He tells himself maybe it is because it’s been a while, but if he is being honest, it is all her. His insides are vibrating with the anticipation of her climax. He is dying to see it. 

He picks up the pace, alternating the rhythm of his fingers slip-sliding over her clit, trying to find the right combination of friction and tempo, and her stilted whimpers start to rise in volume. She squeezes her eyes shut, her lips falling open in mortified bliss as her hips start to quake. Her knees turn to jelly, and he yanks his hand from her bra, braces his arm along her lower back to prop her up against the door. _God_ , a soft, breathless wonder in his ear. He feels the warm flood on his fingers, his hand, and wonders if it would be too obvious if he took some on his hand and retreated to the nearest restroom.

“God, Juggie,” she whispers before yanking him forward to smash their mouths together, hers hungrier, most unchaste, and he feels the wanton slide of her tongue past his lips, slithering obscenely along his own. She is an enigma, a fucking delightful enigma.

He has to balance one hand against the door to keep his torso from pressing against her, the hand he just had buried in her panties, and he privately bemoans the slick loss for his own gratification later in whatever empty room he finds in the next sixty seconds. One light breeze would decimate him.

“Can I?” She suddenly palms the front of his trousers.

Jug snatches her wrist. “Betty, don’t.”

But it’s too late. She experimentally curls her hand around the girth of him, and the knot in his gut gives, his hips jerking against her hand. His chest releases one wounded groan, burying his forehead into the hand braced against the door. He feels her hand on the back of his neck, grazing through the errant curls there in a soothing pattern of random shapes, almost like she is comforting him, like she thinks she hurt him.

He stands up straighter, almost afraid to look her in the eye. The surprise on her face would be comical if it weren’t for the flush of embarrassment he knows is burning across his cheeks, making it difficult to even offer up a self-conscious chuckle. _Jesus, you amateur_. He hasn’t creamed his jeans since he was fifteen.

She muddles through a clumsy apology, and then he finally laughs. “No, it’s okay. It’s, uh, it’s a compliment really.” He hasn’t gotten that keyed up in a long time. He isn’t sure he has ever ramped up so quickly before.

Then, she is suddenly laughing, too. At first only a giggle that matures into another full body laugh she tries to hide behind her hand. He rolls his eyes because she is really laughing at him a little bit, not so much with him. It is worth a chuckle, sure, he can admit that. Jug tries to play it off, nodding along and smiling, like _let’s pile it on the minuteman._

But when she keeps laughing, he growls and pounces, tickling her bare torso, crowding her against the door with no hope of escape. Her laughter rises to shrieks and uncontrollable giggles, grabbing his wrists as she attempts to wrestle herself away from the onslaught.

“Say mercy,” he demands, breathless but enjoying the struggle. Her cheeks are shiny and red, and her eyes are damp around the corners from too much laughter, damp for all the right reasons, he muses.

She shouts _NO_ between her involuntary squealing, trying to shrimp her way out of his hold.

“Come on, mercy,” he commands, pinning her hips to the door with his own while spidery fingers reach every inch of her belly, slithering up around her waist, tickling her relentlessly. “Mercy, Betts.”

He can see she is losing steam, gasping with each wriggle of his fingers into her middle. She sputters her forfeit, a panting _mercy, you asshole_. Jug swallows the _hole_ with his mouth against hers. He draws her upper lip between his own, a reverent press, and then softly closes around her bottom lip, an adoring nip, before slotting his mouth over her own. It feels almost religious, pouring his devotion into one worshipful kiss like a prayer.

He leans his forehead against hers, and everything around him, everything inside of him feels warm. She smiles up at him, bee-stung lips and eyes wet with laughter, and he whispers, almost like he still cannot believe his luck, “You’re a marvel.”


	7. see no evil III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I see the fear, it’s on the rise_   
>  _Let’s catch the enemy by surprise_   
>  _Bury your treasure where it can’t be found_   
>  _Bury it deep in hallowed ground_
> 
> Hallowed Ground by Violent Femmes

His mother was singing in the kitchen. She often hummed, but she never sang. She sang then, though, lending words in a strange tongue to the unaccompanied violins on the record spinning in the den. What began as a gentle croon traipsing alongside the meandering violins grew strident as the strings began to whine and rasp in a celebration of misfortune, a convoy of drums trailing behind in a triumphant death march.

His mother wore a red apron, and he remembers the sway of her black skirt, the sharp contrast of the red as she rocked on her heels like a boat on a sea at night. Her hips swayed as she rocked the pestle in the mortar, and whatever she ground smelled pungent and bitter.

A pot boiled on the stove, and Jughead’s stomach grumbled loudly with the promise of food.

Without looking at him, she directed a single finger toward the stool waiting for him. Her nails were as red as her apron. “Forsythe, your dinner is on the counter.”

Kicking his heels back and forth along to the drums, Jug ate the leftover stew his mother set out for him. His father passed through at some point. In those days, it felt like his father was only passing through. Pretty soon his dad wasn’t passing through at all.

He recalls the look on his father’s face, like he was pleading with his mother for something he would not say out loud, muted by pride or fear. With one unsettled glance at her red apron, he sighed. “I’m going out.”

His mother smiled in profile. “Of course you are.”

Before he left, his dad skewed Jug’s beanie and kissed him on the head, whispering just for him, “Don’t eat the borscht. Not even a taste.”

Jughead scrunched his face and shot back that he hated beets. It earned him a chuckle, another fond pat on the head.

His mother slammed the pot lid on the stovetop, startling father and son apart. “You used to love my borscht.” She ladled a bowlful and slapped it onto the countertop in front of his father. It sloshed and spilled viscerous red onto the linoleum, and Jughead thought it looked like a bowl of blood with chunks of flesh bobbing about in it, like the fresh livers his mother bought from the butcher. “You shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach, dear.”

His father ignored her and the bowl, leaning down to talk to Jughead close. “Hey, bud, let’s say you let mom have her dinner party, and we go have some fun.”

His mother picked up the bowl of borscht and dropped it into the sink, red spattering up the backsplash. “You are not taking him to the bar with you.”

Jughead, nine-year-old ambassador between the warring nations of FP and Gladys Jones, could sense a fight brewing. His mother had guests on the way. If she had to fight with his dad while she was readying dinner for her guests, the fallout would be unimaginable. It would end in a week-long stalemate, like always, neither speaking to each other, and his mother would yank Jug around in passive-aggressive ploys to make his dad mad.

He gave his dad a well-meaning smile and told him he had to finish his dinner.

“Okay, kiddo, okay.” His father squeezed his shoulder affectionately, but he trained his gaze on his wife, dark eyes on dark eyes, and Jughead was always curious about where he got his baby blues. “You keep him upstairs, Gladys.”

His father bent down to level with his son once more, his hands warm and heavy on Jughead’s shoulders. “Hey, bud, you stay in your room tonight, okay? You don’t come out no matter what you hear, alright?”

He groaned, “Dad.” Jughead didn’t want to miss _Starsky and Hutch_.

His father cut him off gently, covering it up with a small reassuring smile. “Can you promise me you’ll stay in your room?”

Jughead sulked but he agreed. “I promise.”

“Good boy,” his dad praised, thumbing his son’s nose.

His mother had already turned back to her mortar and pestle. The record was left on repeat, the strings picking back up again and wandering through the den, snaking their way into the kitchen. The sway returned to his mother’s hips, the soft swish-swish of her skirts, the scrape of the pestle grinding in time.

“You cannot keep him in the dark forever, FP Jones,” she warned her husband as the foreboding pulse of the drums filled all the blank spaces, wrapping itself around each unsaid word in the Jones family kitchen.

His father slammed the door on the way out.

“Wash your dish, Forsythe.”

Dutifully pulling out the step-stool, Jughead cleaned his bowl and water glass and placed them on the drying rack. When his mother gave him the eye, he cleaned the leftover Tupperware and the rest of the dirty dishes in the sink.

When he was finished, she was still grinding, sprinkling in fresh sprigs and seeds from different containers scattered on the countertop. Jughead dragged the step-stool over to her workspace and hopped up to get a look at what she was concocting. “Mom, what’s that?” He asked, pointing to the spray of white flowers he often spotted growing near the marsh.

His mother’s eyes followed the path of his finger. “Hemlock, dear.”

“What are you making? Is it dessert?” He hoped not. It smelt awful. His stomach churned just looking at the brown and green mish-mash his mother worked at in the mortar.

His mother smiled, adding the white flowers to the poultice. “Yes, Forsythe, but it is a special dessert for a special guest. It isn’t for good little boys like yourself because that’s what you are, right? You’re my good little boy.”

She wiped her hands on the front of her apron and then cradled his cheek in her palm. He could smell the bitter herbs on her skin. “This dessert has magic powers, you know. You want to know what it does?”

He could feel the edge of her red nails against his skin. “What, mommy?”

  
“If you eat it, you cannot tell a lie. It charms your tongue so you can only speak the truth. But, I don’t have to give it to you, do I, Forsythe?” She wondered, smoothing the backs of her fingers along his cheek. He was about to nod, promise her he would never betray her, when she snatched his chin between her fingers, her red nails digging into the baby fat along his jawline. “You would never lie to mommy, would you?”

Her dark eyes always reminded him of the polished obsidian paper weights in the den, shiny like they captured all the light but never let it go, like it was trapped inside of them.

“Never,” he swore. Her pleased smile spread across his insides like black oil over water.

When she released him with a gentle _scoot_ to go brush his teeth before bed, he hurried up the stairs. Jughead studied the small red crescents dotting his cheeks in the bathroom mirror. The marks were still there when he finished brushing and the doorbell rang.

* * *

“We came in here for a reason, Jughead,” she reminds him, yet she lets him grab under her thighs and hoist her up on the countertop.

“And we’ll do that,” he promises between affectionate nips under her jaw. “Just.” He presses his thumb under her chin, feels her pulse fluttering underneath the soft skin, and it reminds him of the hurried wingbeats of a bird trying to take flight. “You know, priorities.” Another graze of teeth, another dizzy gasp, and he forgets why they broke into the nurse’s office in the first place.

“Remember I have to meet Archie.” He slips her lobe between his teeth, and her breath catches. “For study group,” she gets out, her palms pushing weakly against his shoulders.

She can call it study group all she wants. It is tutoring. His well-meaning but dense roommate is failing remedial algebra. He thinks Betty’s fondness for her oldest friend is endearing, but it also cuts into his own time with her, which never feels like enough. Between classes, her feigning his nonexistence in the public sphere, and planning this scheme, he doesn’t get too many chances to have her alone. And it is driving him crazy.

Jughead wants to kiss her all the time. Watching her teeth worry her pen caps in English, he wants to feel them sinking into his bottom lip. Watching her lick her yogurt spoon at breakfast, he wants to feel that little pink tongue sliding along his own. He watches her pretend flirt with Chuck Clayton in the hallway outside of Civics, and he feels like a Neanderthal, fighting every urge to shoulder his way in between and kiss her messy, to the point she could not string two words together with a whit of coherence.

“Juggie, I have to be at the library by five,” she warns him, but she does nothing to stop him from revisiting the mark he left behind her ear last time, the one he won’t let fade. The one she tells Veronica and Chuck is only a bug bite, concealing it with a Band-Aid like it will be out of sight out of mind. He stares at that fucking Band-Aid all damn day.

“Sucks that you can’t stop kissing me, doesn’t it?” He murmurs between kisses, pinning her back against the cabinet doors, the glass rattling.

She laughs, snubbing him with a cheek. “It’s not cute when you talk to yourself.”

He shuts her up with another kiss, wrapping her ponytail up in his hand and tugging her head back, drawing her whole body against him. Her knees are tight against his flanks, the heels of her Keds stroking the backs of his thighs. Everything about her makes him feel like he may have lost his mind. He loses time. He loses rationality. He cannot decide whether the world has lost its dimensionality, if the basic rules of physics still hold because everything feels flipped upside down. Or the world has taken on new ones, a fourth and a fifth dimension, but either way, he feels disoriented, and he doesn’t want it to stop.

He pulls back just a hair to ask her if it is still cute. When she yanks him forward for another, he feels he drove his point home.

He isn’t sure how much time passes, but the sun is falling behind the maples outside the windows. They are losing daylight, and Archie needs the help, so Jughead forces himself to let her go. Besides, if she keeps rolling her hips like that, there will be a repeat of the incident in the audio visual room. He reluctantly extracts himself, peeling her hand off the back of his neck. When she whines, he wants to say to hell with it, Archie can memorize polynomial identities on his own, but then this would be a terrible waste of a good B&E.

He gives her an apologetic peck, and she sulks like _you started it_.

“Thanks for the compliment,” she says with a pointed look at his pants.

He glances down at his trousers, then bumps her chin with the backs of his knuckles. “Like you needed it.”

Jughead steps back. He gives her thighs a wistful look as they close and almost winces when she asks if it is uncomfortable. Rubbing the back of his neck, he turns away from her, scanning labels on the cabinets. “Nothing I haven’t dealt with before,” he assures her. He wants to tell her probably half the guys she knows have sprung wood in the middle of history class with no one the wiser.

She mercifully changes the subject. “What are we looking for again?” It helps the blood flow in the opposite direction back towards his brain, his thoughts clearing up, focusing in on the cabinet contents.

“They ever give you muscle relaxers?” He asks, peering through the glass into one of the medicine cabinets.

“You mean,” she starts and then flushes in mortification. They were discussing the difficulties of navigating ill-timed hard-ons only moments ago, but _this_ is what makes her blush. “Like for my period?”

He nods, testing the handles on one of the cabinets. Locked. It pays to have a lock picker for a girlfriend, he muses, and then wonders if that is what she is now. Her cheeks are still flaming with embarrassment, and she won’t look him in the eye, but he looks at her now, asking himself the question. When all this was said and done, would Betty Cooper be his girlfriend? It feels middle school and soapy, but he wants to know what this means. Jughead reminds himself that perhaps this isn’t the best time to hash out the specifics of their relationship.

_After_ , he tells himself. After they bring down Chuck and Nick, he can ask her for a definition. He already has his in hand. He thinks he knew it from the first moment he walked into the _Blue and Gold_.

“Come on, Betty, girls have periods,” he says, laying it out on the table. “I’m not a rube.” He knows that isn’t really the issue. If Archie even said the word period in her presence, both Betty and Archie would melt into a puddle of humiliation like water on a wicked witch. Jughead refrains from puddling.

Jug’s mother had him picking up tampons and milk from the convenience store when he was ten years old. His mother endured awful periods complete with migraines. He refilled her hot water bottle and fetched extra pads and helped her with the muscle relaxers and herbal teas. She was always sweet to him after he drew the shades, tucking him into bed with her. It was one of the few times she would ever thank him. And she liked having him nap with her, stroking her fingers through his hair. She said it calmed her down. For a few silent hours on her worst days, his mother was bearable, approachable, even enjoyable.

Betty hops off the countertop and spins on her heels, afraid to look at him. She starts to pick the lock on the cabinet they just made out against, and he shuffles up behind her to study her technique. When she feels his breath against the back of her neck, he can see her shoulders tighten, hackles rising.

“How do you know how to do this stuff?” She doesn’t answer him, huffing as she maneuvers the bobby pin behind the nail file. “Teach me,” he appeals, resting his chin on her shoulder to watch her work. He feels the muscles relax and smiles.

“It isn’t that complicated,” she tells him.

He can feel the minutiae of every movement in the subtle tweaks and turns of her shoulder. His hand slips up around her waist, flattening his palm to her belly. He feels her shallow breaths with his proximity. Jughead didn’t notice it until a few days ago, but every time he gets close, he thinks it rattles her, too. Toni never seemed affected by him at all. It was always fluctuating measures of indifference or ambivalent affection. With Betty, it is like the striking of a tuning fork. As he gets closer, the energy between them vibrates more and more out of control, but he isn’t sure whether it is his frequency or hers that sends tremors through the spaces between them. Or if it is both, if it casts in both directions, but it is produces a striking chord that fires currents through his entire body, sparking on the end of every nerve when he touches her.

“You just have to feel for those little gives.” With that, the lock gives and she jerks the cabinet door open.

He reaches around her to sift through the trove of pill bottles, peering at the labels. She slides the bobby pin back into her hair, and he rests his chin on top of her head while he peruses the medicine cabinet. Soon finding what he was looking for, he pockets the orange bottles and steps back, giving her some much-needed space before he lets himself go too far.

“How do you know about this stuff?” She asks, throwing the question back at him as she closes and relocks the cabinet door.

He shrugs, fiddling with the bottles in his pocket, making the pills rattle around. “My mother was a bit of a chemist.”

“Your mother,” she repeats, and he nods noncommittally.

“You know I’ve wanted to ask,” she muses, trailing off. It isn’t much of a segue, but he opened himself up to it. And he has been so good at not bringing the woman up in conversation, he commends at the same time he gives himself a mental slap upside the head. “Was she anything like how you described in that story?”

He feels the mean smile curving along his face, unbidden and crawling up from inside of him, from that nowhere place amongst the reeds and the murky water where his mother still haunts him. “I couldn’t describe the entirety of my mother in one novel let alone one short story, Betty.”

* * *

He is out of breath when he makes it to the boy’s locker room. Passing Chuck and Betty flirting in the hallway, Jughead doesn’t spare them a glance, but he feels Chuck’s eyes on him, on his damp trouser legs and the dark half-moons under his pits. He shifts his book-bag higher on his shoulder to obscure the greenery peeking out of his back pocket and shoves his way into the locker room.

Archie takes one look at his wet trousers and then squints like he is trying to decide whether Jughead truly has several screws loose like everyone says or his roommate is just a harmless eccentric. To throw the redheaded Labrador off the scent, Jug mentions seeing Chuck and Betty outside the locker room. Archie’s face suddenly resembles the sky before a thunderstorm, darkening to every foul shade of green and brown before the funnel touches down.

“Veronica keeps telling me to leave it alone.” It looks so physically painful for Archie to admit out loud that Jughead cannot imagine how agonizing it must be to obey.

“I don’t get it.” Archie’s gaze falls to his PE shirt, the Canterbury emblem, the forgiving lamb and virtuous lion reflecting one another, the dove of peace haloed above them, a kind reminder. “Maybe it’s because Veronica used to date that jag, but I thought girls had rules about that, you know.”

Jughead’s little suspicion gremlin latches onto that. “Wait, Veronica dated Chuck?”

“Yeah, and Nick St. Claire before that,” Archie discloses, scoffing as he yanks his uniform shirt over his head without unbuttoning it. “Nick St. Claire has pretty much made the rounds with the entire female student body. He even dated Cheryl for a second. Now, he’s picking his teeth with freshman. Veronica says he’s always been a skeeze.”

Jughead attempts casual because Archie is learning the scent when Jughead switches over into investigatory mode, and his roommate does not like it. He knows it isn’t exactly polite, that friends don’t investigate friends, but he sees Chuck enter the locker room with a self-satisfied smile on his prick face and bites the bullet. “Did Veronica ever talk about them when she dated them? What they were like?”

Archie groans and gives Jughead a dirty look. It was one question too many, and the redhead felt Jug’s mental probe prodding at him in all the wrong spots. “No, and she bites my head off every time I try to bring it up.” Some of those spots are still bruised.

It is still useable information. Archie eyes him like he expects another postmortem about his girlfriend’s exes, but Jughead abstains for Archie’s sake. “And I’m guessing you’ll lop mine off too?”

“Jug I’m on edge.” Archie tugs his PE shirt over his head, nearly tangles himself up in the arms with all his pent-up rage. “I’m not in the mood for an interrogation.”

“Okay, Archie.” Jughead tucks the spray of white flowers deeper into his pocket. “This too shall pass,” he swears to his roommate, but Archie doesn’t look so sure.

This is a new development, though. If he remembers correctly, Veronica was quick to believe Chuck and Nick were the liars that night. She reeled on Nick like she planned to flay him alive. But then, she didn’t. She folded like a cheap suit, which didn’t seem very Veronica Lodge-like.

Jughead is pretty sure Betty was not the first girl. Nick said something much to that affect. So, if Betty was not the first girl – Jughead starts connecting each awful dot.

Looking at Archie, if Jug’s gut-twisting assumptions are correct, he cannot imagine what his friend must be going through. Chuck and Nick didn’t get far with Betty, thank God, but even Jughead feels like ritual disembowelment would be too light a sentence.

Jughead wonders how much Archie knows about the time his girlfriend spent with Chuck and Nick, how much Veronica was willing to disclose. Jughead studies a very confused and demoralized Archie staring at the innards of his PE locker, stewing in the stench of old sweat and listening to Chuck peacocking from the adjacent row of lockers, and Jughead concludes it was probably the bare bones version, probably similar to what they fed Betty the morning after Cheryl’s party. What would Archie do if his worst fears about Veronica’s romantic tenure with Chuck and Nick were confirmed.

He knew Betty must have had a good reason for keeping Veronica, and by default Archie, out of their plan, but now Jughead desperately wants to rope Archie into their scheme if only to give the kid a sense of closure, of usefulness. Jug can empathize to some extent. For those few weeks after Cheryl’s party, he wasn’t certain he had the means of bring down Chuck and Nick. Archie could be helpful, but seems handicapped by something. Jug wants to ask. He knows he is missing something important, but it took everything in Archie not to lash out for merely broaching the subject. Whatever it is, Betty must have a good idea, and she is acting accordingly. At least, that’s what Jughead reasons with himself. He doesn’t know these people very well. He wants to, but he isn’t there yet.

When they both hear Betty’s name dropped into the conversation followed by raucous laughter, Archie is on his feet. Jughead intercepts with his entire body and a gentle _Archie_. Archie steps against him. If he really wanted to, Archie could mow him down and Jughead wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing to stop him, but Archie doesn’t. He stands chest to chest with Jughead listening to Chuck Clayton strumpet his childhood best friend, his hands braced at his side as if waiting for Chuck’s neck to slot itself between them. Archie was a kid with momentum, always ready for action, but he didn’t know what to do with himself when he couldn’t act. “No, I don’t care anymore. Someone needs to knock him down a peg or two,” he decides, taking another step forward and knocking Jughead backwards.

At that moment, Coach Kleats walks by, shouting that the boys have ten minutes before they need to be on the court. He yells at Chuck to stop yapping and get his shorts on.

Archie eyes the coach, weighing his chances. With some apprehension, Jughead settles his hands over his friend’s shoulders. “Archie, hey.” The redhead won’t look at him, tracking their teacher’s movements through the locker room. “Archie, come on.”

“Aren’t you mad?” The redhead accuses.

Jughead sighs. “Yeah, I’m furious, Arch.”

“Well, you don’t seem like it. You don’t even act like you care anymore. What changed, Jug?”

“You told me at the beginning of the year that I needed to pick my battles, remember.” Archie didn’t use those words exactly, but Jughead got the message.

“I do care.” He steps back but keeps his hands on Archie’s shoulders, extending his fingers to show he isn’t restraining the redhead so much as acting the roadblock, keeping him from repeating Jughead’s mistakes by engaging with the enemy directly.

These battles are not fought in the open. Jughead used to believe honor and chivalry was meeting the enemy head-on with honest intentions, like the kings and knights of old, but he is learning very quickly that is not the way this world works. And not only this world. His mother was always trying to impress upon him that the only way to get ahead was through subversion and trickery. She thought he lived in a fantasy world of ideals and theoreticals, that he was childish to believe in virtues like chivalry and honor. _Don’t show your strength unless you have it, Forsythe. Only fools show their hand first._

In the early days of his mother’s rise to power, she worked like a thief in the night. By the time his mother was the official head of the Ohio Serpents, her reign of terror had spilled into the public sphere. She had the Sheriff’s department in her pocket. Minor gangs had been pushed to the county fringes. Ninety percent of the drugs flowing through the Toledo metropolitan got their start on the Jones property north of Oak Harbor. When his mother reached full command, she told him, _true power is getting away with killing a man in broad daylight_. The first time she did this on the main thoroughfare of Oak Harbor was when Jughead believed he would never escape her.

When Jughead first came to Canterbury, he wanted a clean slate. He didn’t want to get by on his mother’s underhanded tactics. He told himself that true justice could only be found with complete candor, but his honesty had won him no favors in this place. Watching Betty work behind the scenes now, he realizes he always had the necessary tools at his disposal. He has one wadded in his pocket at this very moment. Though frustrating, he concedes his mother was right. He was a fool to show his hand first. His candor nearly got him expelled within the first month.

“Archie,” he tries again, and when the redhead finally looks at him, he levels him with such bald-faced rage that Jughead feels awful. He didn’t even think Archie was capable of that much anger, but he feels the severity of it under his well-meaning hands on his friend’s shoulders.

Jughead lowers his voice in case Chuck or some other eavesdropper has an ear peeled. “You know how this place works. Charging in with guns a-blazing, that doesn’t solve anything.”

Archie opens his mouth to argue, but Jughead cuts him off, “Can you trust me?” It is all Jug has.

Archie matches his tone, whispering back, “You are doing something?” He sounds hopeful.

“Yeah,” Jughead says with a quick nod. “I’m ending it,” he swears. For good.

* * *

Jughead hates dances. No one is surprised, Betty least of all.

Before the dance, he and Betty discuss the plan, the primary and secondary locations, the timing.

She giggles at his visible discomfort, bothering with his tie, shifting in his suit jacket. It isn’t much different from his school uniform, but she tells him he looks sharp in a suit and tie. She looks like a strawberry ice cream sundae in her blushing pink dress, the sensible hem length and modest neckline distracting anyone from the strategic cutouts in the waist. He would endure one slow song just to place his hands there. Even if he had to make room for the cock-blocking holy spirit, it would be worth it. 

Jughead produces the truth-telling cocktail in the small corked vial he filched from Dr. Benzene’s classroom where he prepared it. She peers at the clear, yellow liquid, and asks him what is in it.

“Family recipe,” he informs her because that is as close to the truth as he is willing to get.

She squints at the mixture, quirks a brow up at him. “This isn’t going to kill him is it?”

“No,” he defends quickly. “No. It shouldn’t.” He closes his fist around the vial. “I mean it is going to make him feel pretty sick. Probably.” It made Jughead feel like he wanted to die, but he got over it eventually. “But no, it shouldn’t kill him.”

“Shouldn’t?” She doesn’t sound convinced.

“It won’t, Betty,” he assures her, opening his hand and presenting her with the vial.

“This stuff can be pretty strong, though,” he warns, dropping the vial in her outstretched hand. “It is hard to get the dosage right, so try half first.”

“Half?” Her skepticism grows and rightly so. Even he thought his mother’s recipes were half-baked, sometimes literally, but he is more than ninety percent sure this one will work the way it is meant to. He has been on the receiving end enough times. 

“If it seems like it is taking too long, slip him the other half.” That was the plan. Chuck usually gets bombed at dances, and Betty begged her date to bring some liquid courage with a promising wink in her eye. Then, Chuck would struggle to distinguish between the alcohol or something else when the drug hit his system. The alcohol would help him get there faster.

Betty tucks the vial into her cleavage, and when Jughead’s eyes follow the movement, she throws him a suggestive smile, her mascara making her eyes look bigger, big enough to get lost in. She bites her lip. “You hid the camera?”

His _yeah_ is already breathless with the image of her incisor sinking into her bottom lip, pink and full and wet.

She plans to lure Chuck into the boathouse. Chuck rows for the crew team as well, with Nick, surprisingly. Jughead stashed the video camera in an eight-seater. It is loaded with a fresh untapped three-hour tape in the chamber, but Jughead really hopes it does not take that long to squeeze a confession out of Chuck. That was why Jughead suggested his mother’s cheater pie refashioned into a delightfully innocuous cordial, a little something to grease the wheels. Betty loved it, _a taste of the bastard’s own medicine_ , she called it.

The heated look in her eyes draws him forward, but the moment before his lips make contact, Betty smiles and rebuffs him with a cheek, a new move that is starting to wear on his nerves. “You’ll mess up my makeup,” she excuses easily, reaching up to console him with a hand on his cheek, a thumb on his bottom lip.

A tiny flame of concern flickers in the backs of her eyes, and she whispers, “I might have to kiss him, you know.”

Even though something twinges awful in the center of his chest, he tells her it is okay.

“You’re okay with that?”

He takes her wrist in his hand and presses a kiss to her palm, to the soft underside of her forearm. “No,” he admits quietly against her skin. “But, it needs to be convincing, right?”

She gives a slow, apprehensive nod, and he assures her that he will be there. He won’t let anything happen to her.

“I’m not scared of him,” she declares firmly. “He’s the one that should be scared.” Sometimes her tongue is like a lathe, carving out words with edges sharp enough to guillotine a man, but then he forgets this girl walks and talks with the likes of Veronica Lodge and Cheryl Blossom. He wonders if he even needs to be there for this or if she merely needed someone to hold the camera.

Her features soften, the anger bleeding away. “Take a picture of me now,” she asks him. “Of us.” She touches the camera hanging from his neck. Because she will be tied up with Chuck, he needs to take pictures for her article on homecoming and the Jason Blossom memorial.

“You sure?”

“You would have been my date tonight. I want to see how it could have been.”

She says it like it would have been a certainty, and he wants to believe her, but a niggling part of him doesn’t think it will be so easy for him to get out of the closet. He tells himself it is only leftover shellshock from his stint as Toni’s unpublished friend with limited benefits, that when push comes to shove and they get rid of Chuck and Nick, Jughead can come out of the closet. Then, his imagination asks him what he will do when she doesn’t let him out. He corrects his imagination, _if_ not _when_ , and a hundred inner thoughts laugh back at him.

Jughead places the camera on one of the desks and sets the timer. When he joins Betty by the bookshelves, she straightens his tie and smooths his lapels down before letting him sling his arm around her waist. He smiles fondly at her, all those type-A idiosyncrasies that he sees in her brother Charles, too, that they must have picked up somewhere. He suspects their mother. His smile gets immortalized when the flash goes off two seconds later.

* * *

Jughead knows he surprises a few by showing his face at all, but he hides himself behind a camera for the majority of the time he has to be there. Betty asked him to focus specifically on the memorial aspect of the dance, which also means attempting to extract a quote from Cheryl Blossom, the organizer for the memorial and the late Jason Blossom’s indomitable twin sister. _Should be a piece of cake,_ he muses tongue-in-cheek, _because doesn’t Cheryl Blossom love seeing your mug on a good day_.

Lindsey Buckingham’s _Trouble_ is playing over the loudspeakers, and as Jughead double checks the settings on his camera, he wonders how the administration mediates the music for the dances, if there is a working list of banned songs. He can imagine the heated debates in the conference room with his English teacher Sister Kalinsky and Headmaster Weatherbee, piecing out the implied eroticism in every sung analogy. Jughead thinks any word, if said the right way, can sound sexual. He could say the word fork and make it sound like fuck.

His internal dialogue cuts off when he spots Cheryl gliding across the dancefloor to greet her lackeys Tina and Ginger, all air kisses and faux giggles. She looks like Jessica Rabbit with the dramatic wave of red hair falling over her shoulder, the scarlet dress that pushes not only the boundaries of polite society but probably breaks at least a few of the dress codes for the dance. There are still a few fliers pinned to some of the corkboards displayed in the cafeteria, complete with to-scale drawings of what was appropriate versus damned to hell.

Jug takes a few test shots of the festivities, and then swallows his pride for his approach. The moment his feet land in front of Cheryl Blossom and he raises his camera, Jughead literally butts elbows with none other than Dilton Doiley, his simultaneous _school paper_ getting swallowed up by Dilton’s _yearbook_. Dilton glares at him and nudges Jug’s elbow aside to raise his camera once more. “I was here first, Jones.”

Cheryl shifts her gaze to both of them, glances at the cameras, and then turns to Ginger and Tina for a makeup check. Her lemmings gush and coo their mistress’s perfection, and Cheryl snaps her fingers at them for silence before swiveling back to Dilton and Jughead. She purses her lips at Jughead and makes a sweeping motion to the side.

When Jughead doesn’t move, she snaps at him, “Piss off, St. Vinnie.” Dilton throws him the most shit-eating grin while Cheryl fluffs her hair and poses for Dilton’s camera, pouting to accentuate her cherry red moue.

The flash highlights the gold shadow around her eyes, the deep lines of blush under her cheekbones, and she really does look the picture of sultry dread. Jughead swipes a couple photographs without permission anyway. He manages to get her in a shot with the giant blow-up of her brother Jason’s placid golden-boy face plastered above the platform where the DJ spins records. That will be the one he wants to put with the article, but he suspects Betty will not approve of the juxtaposition, Cheryl’s rude vanity against the morbid backdrop of her brother’s untimely death.

Dilton finishes and shuffles aside to let Cheryl pass, but Jughead intercepts her departure. Her look is positively venomous, and the moment Jughead opens his mouth to ask about Jason, she literally shoves him to the side. “Know your place, you imbecile.” She click-clacks off on her too high kitten heels, velvet and as visceral red as her dress and hair.

Jughead rubs his shoulder where her palm landed hard as Dilton sidles up to his side. “This really isn’t your purview is it, Jones?”

Jughead tracks Cheryl’s movements across the dance floor where she greets Veronica and Archie at their table. He doesn’t see Betty anywhere which starts to unnerve him.

“Yeah, Dilton here is the class voyeur, aren’t you? Know your place, Jones.” Kurtz, of all people, manifests on his other side wearing what looks like the Riddler’s suit, but it is hard to tell how green it is in the dim of the school cafeteria.

With his face hidden behind the viewfinder, Doiley reasons he is merely a photographer, snapping a photo of Kurtz and Jughead. 

Kurtz shrugs. “Same thing.” He fixes an enigmatic smile for Dilton on the next click of the shutter and a creep wink on the last. “What about you, Jones? You a peeping Tom, too?”

Jughead lets his camera hang limp around his neck as he scans the cafeteria one last time for Betty. “I’d like to think it’s a bit more professional than that. What about you? I didn’t take you for the dances and school spirit type, Kurtz. Nice suit, by the way.”

Kurtz smooths his hands along his lapels. The tiny silver squares from the disco ball let Jughead see it really is green, as green as Betty’s eyes. “I’m playing tonight.”

“There’s a game going on?” Jughead wonders, looking back over at Dilton, who nods solemnly like he isn’t exactly too jazzed about it.

“I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone,” Dilton explains, taking several more photographs of the dancers, the singles scattered amongst the tables draped with royal blue tablecloths and fake gold plastic dishware.

“You in?” Kurtz inquires innocently, raising one eyebrow at Jughead.

Then, Jug finally spots Betty weaving through the crowd on the dance floor, leading Chuck by the hand towards the back entrance. “Um, no,” he starts, tracing his mark across the cafeteria. “I’ve got something else I have to do.”

“Ooh,” Kurtz coos, rubbing his palms together. “Guess Jug’s dance card is already full, Master Doiley. Shall we?”

Dilton checks how many shots he has left on his roll, and shows Kurtz five fingers. The kid in the green suit rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he sighs. “Later, nerds.”

Kurtz breaks one way while Jughead peels off another, navigating through the swaying bodies on the dance floor.

When Jughead escapes out into the courtyard, he spies a flash of Betty’s pink skirt disappearing behind a screen of junipers, her tickled laughter echoing off the brick walls of the gymnasium.

The moon’s face sits high and swollen with light in the clear dark sky. He breathes steam into the air and recalls it was a night like this. His mother drew attention to the full moon. She swept one wayward inky curl back off his eyes and told him the moonlight made his hair look like the blue at the bottom of the ocean, that it helped her see him for what he was. It was a night like this because it was exactly the same night one lunar year ago. He completely forgot.

By the time he gets to the boathouse, pins and needles radiate down his arm, the scar tissue seizing up in the cold fall air. It is no warmer inside the boathouse.

He crouches behind the eight-seater where he stashed the camcorder. As quietly as possible, he exchanges the camera around his neck for the bulkier camcorder, rechecking the tape and the power supply. The red recording button illuminates like a predator’s eye in the night.

Chuck stumbles over a buoy and laughs at himself, almost dragging Betty down with him. He takes a sip from his hip flask and watches Betty cross the dock like he is studying a new specimen under a microscope, some undocumented species. She looks almost ethereal in the moonlight, the pink of her dress paler, her soft features haloed by golden curls. She is heart-stoppingly beautiful.

The moonlight reflects off the black water, lighting up the interior of the boathouse. Betty kicks off her heels and lets the toes of one foot skim the water, breaking the moon’s reflection.

“I didn’t expect you to be like this,” Chuck confesses through a hiccup. He laughs again. “I think I’m already drunk.”

Betty tiptoes towards him, swishing her skirt about her thighs. Chuck watches the movement and smiles, hazy-eyed and docile. She asks him what he expected, and he sounds half-way to thoroughly toasted when he speculates, “I don’t know, shy maybe.” He sips the flask thoughtfully, staring at Betty’s pink toes. “It’s not a bad thing. I like that you’re shy. You’re not like the other girls here.” Chuck reaches out, his fingertips grazing her pink skirt as she twirls away. “You’re – you’re pure.”

Betty giggles at that. “Pure.”

She pirouettes and Chuck snatches her wrist, pulling her against him. “And beautiful,” he tells her, trying for sincerity, but Jughead can tell he is slowly losing voluntary motor function. “You’re fucking gorgeous.”

“You’re sweet, Chuck.” Betty gives one cursory look at the hand holding her wrist. His grip is too tight because he doesn’t know his strength anymore, but Betty gives nothing away. Jughead waits for her signal with bated breath.

Chuck offers her the flask. He accidentally clips her chin with the metal mouth. “You want another sip?”

She smiles demurely and shakes her head. “No, I think I’ve had enough. I’m already feeling a little faint. My cheeks are warm.” Betty takes Chuck’s hand and places his palm on her cheek. “Feel.”

Chuck takes another pull off the flask, eyes cloudy and unfocused. His thumb traces across her cheek to slip over her bottom lip. “Yeah, you’re warm,” he murmurs, leaning forward like he intends to kiss her. The flask drops loose from his hand, his knees buckle, and he drops like a sack of potatoes.

Betty remains standing with a smear of pink striping down her chin. Chuck mumbles something about not being able to feel his legs, and Betty wipes the back of her hand across her mouth.

“Start recording,” she demands, and Jughead comes out from behind the stacked boats with the camcorder balanced on his shoulder, the red light glowing.

Kneeling on the dock, Chuck’s gaze tilts up towards Jughead with some difficulty. “Jones.” He tries to stand up but fails. “What the hell.”

“Do we have to tie him up,” Betty wonders, looking around for some rope.

Jughead waves her off. “He can’t go anywhere, Betty, trust me.” Chuck won’t get the feeling back in his legs for at least a few hours. In a few minutes, it will spread to his arms and his hands.

“What the fuck did you give me,” Chuck snaps, one of his final coherent thoughts. “Jesus, I feel sick. I think I’m gonna throw up.” 

“It’s a taste of your own medicine, Chuckles,” Jughead informs him.

Chuck actually chuckles, dropping his head. “Good one.” When he looks back up, all pretense of civility is gone. “You’re so fucked, Jones.” He sounds so certain that Jughead snorts.

Chuck turns to Betty. “What sorts of lies has he been feeding you, Betty?”

“I’d ask you the same thing.”

“What? Betty, come on.” It has not clicked in Chuck’s brain that Betty is fully on board with this. Jughead wants to shout to the heavens that she instigated it. 

“It’s called cheater pie for a reason, Chuckles,” Jughead explains.

“You think I’m going to talk? Fuck you. See? I still have a mind of my own.”

“That’s not exactly how it works,” Jug clarifies.

“Betty,” Chuck implores, ignoring the camera and the one manning it.

“How deep do you think the water is right here, Chuck?” Betty speculates, peering over the edge of the dock. “You think you could stand up with your head above water?”

Chuck’s gaze flitters to the surface of the dark water sloshing about beneath him, only a couple feet on either side of him.

“You get the picture?” Betty clasps her hands behind her back.

“Come on, Betty, you’re not like this.”

Her teeth click shut. Jughead can practically taste her revulsion. “You have no idea what I’m like, Chuck.”

“It wasn’t – I wasn’t going to do anything,” Chuck swears. “I just wanted to touch you.” There is some of that loose tongue Jug’s mother always promised.

“Guess we’ll never know, will we,” Betty supposes, stepping around Chuck. “What you really intended to do. Because you never got that far.” She settles the heel of her foot against Chuck’s shoulder and he inhales roughly. His hands are glued to the dock. If he moved them, he would fall face first to the ground and so would the last of his dignity. “But, we do know what you intended for Veronica.”

Chuck side-eyes the water. Panic bleeds into the whites of his eyes. “What? Veronica. That – that was blown out of proportion,” he defends.

Betty smiles meanly and shakes her head, disappointment but no surprise. “You’re going to say she wanted it.”

“I’m saying,” Chuck starts but falters. He is losing the ability to speak, beginning to slur his words. Betty must have given him a little more than half. It should have taken a little longer for him to get to this point. His head lolls to the side and Betty lashes out, pinching his chin between her fingers to make him look at her. “I’m saying it was a miscommunication,” he mumbles, sounding like his tongue is too big for his mouth.

“Bullshit,” she bites, snatching the word between her teeth.

“Betty.”

She shakes his chin roughly. “Bullshit, Chuck.”

“Betty, please.”

“You’re going to admit what you did, right now, on camera.” She points at the lens, her index finger glowing in the moonlight. “Say it, Chuck, or you’re going for a swim.”

Chuck tries a different tack. “Betty, this is crazy.” Like a bunny in a bear trap, his panic-stricken eyes flit back and forth between the water and Betty’s green rage. “You’re crazy.”

She snaps, kicking him to the side, and he nearly tumbles off the side of the dock. Chuck cries out in fear and pain, the side of his face and shoulder landing hard. Betty need only roll him another foot and Chuck Clayton would be another memorial footnote in the senior class’s yearbook.

“I am _not_ crazy,” she snaps and dares him to say it again. 

Betty replaces her heel on his hip. Chuck latches onto her ankle, but his grip is so weak, he probably would not manage to pull her in with him. “Admit what you did, Chuck. Final warning.” She applies pressure to his hip, and Jughead tracks the tilt of his body toward the water with the viewfinder. He doesn’t think Betty would actually push Chuck into the water, but he second guesses with the rabid look in her eyes.

Jughead almost drops the camera the moment Chuck’s center of gravity reaches the point of no return, but the kid on the ground yields, nearly crying when he confesses that yes, he and Nick St. Claire raped Veronica Lodge. Betty bares her teeth at his admission, grinding her heel into his belly. He declares on camera that they also planned to do the same to Betty Cooper the night of Cheryl Blossom’s end-of-the-summer party. Betty points at Jughead and orders Chuck to apologize for trying to place blame on him. Seeing Betty’s finger in the viewfinder, Jughead stands a little straighter, doesn’t even hear Chuck’s blubbering _sorry_.

Betty’s heel slides off Chuck’s hip, letting his body tip back towards solid ground. He releases her ankle gasping like he cannot breathe. Jughead tells him to calm down, that he can breathe fine, Chuck just has to remind himself to keep doing it. Chuck’s fingers search across the dock for a firm hold, finding nothing and his panic persists as he feels the world tilt on its axis. Jughead remembers that feeling, like being stuck in a funhouse with a woman chasing him with razor blades. Only Betty is this nightmarish woman threatening him with sharp objects.

He knew this was going to get ugly. He expected it, but the degree of Betty’s animus surprises him. Her temper rapidly disassembled when Chuck called her crazy.

“Is that enough?” Jug asks, shifting the camcorder off his shoulder. She nods, and he powers down the camera.

“Betty,” Chuck calls weakly, attempting to crawl across the dock and away from the water. “Betty, please.”

She softens, and it is like a mask sliding over her face. “Please what, Chuck.”

“Please,” he tries, his tongue slipping over his teeth. “Don’t. I’ll ruined.”

Betty kneels next to him, cradles his cheek in her hand with false mercy. The cuts in her palms have not healed. “Purity is relative, Chuck.” 

Outside the boathouse, she tackles Jughead against the wall. He drops the camcorder to wrap his arms around her waist, hauling her up on her toes. Her mouth is hot and hungry against his, her whole body warm and pressing against him eagerly, her fingers carding through his hair. 

“My heart feels like it is going to pound out of my chest,” she admits breathlessly between kisses. He mumbles _ditto_ , trying to keep up. “That was exhilarating.” He nods dumbly while she nips less than tenderly at his neck.

“Betty,” he calls gently, swallowing when he feels her hips rocking against his own, searching for friction. It is driving him up the wall almost literally. He cannot get a bead on her, and his lizard brain is shouting at him to go with the flow. But, it is well past curfew and they just coerced a criminal confession out of the football team captain with the hard evidence lying at Jughead’s feet, and just the thought of the word hard makes it difficult to think straight. He calls her name against, and she moans in response, which doesn’t help.

“Betty, hey,” he tries again, nudging her backwards with his hands on her waist. Her bare skin is soft and warm against his palms, and he remembers the cutouts in her dress. _Jesus, Jones, get your head on straight_. She looks disappointed and annoyed and turned on, and he knows his face is a perfect reflection right now, but the timing isn’t great. “Sorry, sorry, I want to. I really fucking want to,” he assures her. His lower half corroborates this fact.

“But,” she fills in.

“But,” he starts, searching for the right words. “Let’s get the tape to Weatherbee first. And then, I swear.” He tugs her forward, pressing a fond, promising kiss to her cheek, nuzzling across her jawline to whisper in her ear, “That I will go down on you for our entire independent study come Monday.”

“You’re going to eat your words, Jones,” she retorts, but her words are shaky with anticipation.

“Looking forward to it.”

* * *

Jughead loiters in the hall outside the administrative office. Before Weatherbee led her into his office, Betty turned and smiled at him in thanks. The trust inherent in her gaze buffers the spaces around him, like nothing could touch him if he had her confidence.

He starts to think about that word, the word his mother told him was only a fantasy concocted by Hollywood and gobbled up by the braindead masses, the word his dad swore was the biggest dead end trap known to every man, the word Toni promised him he would find eventually but not with her. He feels for the first time with that word and with Betty, they would be unstoppable.

He spins on his heels, smiles and shakes his head in disbelief. The scales of fate are tipping in his favor for once. He feels his imagination poking at him, tugging on his ear, reminding him there are no happy endings for a Jones, but Jughead’s heart races so fast, his blood thrumming with joy, that he cannot hear. He cannot hear. 

He shuffles around the hallway, toeing the linoleum as he waits patiently for Betty to throw Nick and Chuck under the bus. His hands in his pockets, he thinks about what they should do to celebrate, if he could convince her to go out next weekend, that he could ask around about things to do in town, maybe a movie. He thinks about making out with Betty Cooper in the back of a movie theater, and he doesn’t understand why it is all he wants to do now.

He collapses against one of the trophy cases, pressing his forehead to the cool glass, and wonders why something so simple and mundane as taking the girl he likes out to the movies sends him into a dizzying spiral of want. He closes his eyes, conjuring her and the dark movie theater and the empty back row. Sharing a soda with one straw, playing with the smooth spiral of her ponytail while she looks on in wonder at the bright screen, watching the images flit across the wet shine of her big green eyes.

He opens his eyes into the trophy case and sighs. She will go with him. She will smile, he knows it. He could make it his life’s mission to keep her smiling, he thinks, letting his gaze float lazily across the trophy case shelves, meandering across each photograph and trinket. Football state champs of 1970, basketball state champs of 1968, a photograph of the ROTC squad from that same year. Jughead stares unseeing at the photograph of the 1968 ROTC squad, thinking about tickling Betty behind the ear while she chews on the soda straw, some stupid creature feature blasting in front of them, and then his fantasies stutter to a stop like someone clipped the film reel as his eyes catch on one of the names on the placard beneath the photograph. Edgar Evernever.

He scans the photograph for a familiar face, and he thinks he recognizes him, one of the taller boys standing center back, blonde and still as enigmatic-eyed as ever, docile but confident with the suggestion of a distant smile on his lips. He barely looks any different from his modern day counterpart, and Jughead snorts, commenting privately on good genes or just good pickling.

Then, Jughead catches on one of the boys at the front, dark-haired and bespectacled with a petulant mouth, projecting importance even though he is one of the shortest boys in the group. Jug scans the lists of names again and instantly recalls who this boy is, the same year, the same face in the memorial photograph of the 1968 yearbook. This was the boy who was died the night of the midnight manhunt nearly twenty years ago, and he is here now photographed with none other than Edgar Evernever. 

Jughead glances behind him at the closed door to the administrative office. The good counselor’s office is right around the corner.

Jug looks back at the photograph and rereads the name, Francis Doiley. Doiley. He remembered the face but not the name, and it didn’t click until he saw the two of them together. His own stupidity smacks him in the face. Then, he sees something peeking out from behind the photograph, partially obscured by a shadowbox of medals. Jug stands on his tiptoes to try and make it out, leaning left and right to get a good look. It looks like a puzzle box, but it is hard to tell for sure.

Jughead scans the hallway once more, listening for any sounds behind the administrative office door. It wouldn’t hurt to check, he figures. He is probably wrong, but there is no harm in checking.

He digs in his pocket for the bobby pin and nail file Betty made him carry for the dance because she had nowhere to stash it in her dress. The lock appears as simple as the ones she opened in the school nurse’s office. _You just have to feel for those little gives_ , she told him, and she made it look so easy.

He slides the nail file into the key slot, and then slowly manipulates the bobby pin in after it, jiggling it up and down, searching for those little gives she sounded so sure about. Jughead isn’t sure whether it was Betty’s guidance about finesse or ham-handed dumb luck, but the lock gives and he slides the glass door aside to reach for the puzzle box.

It resembles the puzzle box Edgar gifted him, but the starting point is different. After a few missteps, he realizes this puzzle is more challenging than the previous and smiles. Evernever upped the ante. A door slams down the hallway, and Jughead startles, shoving the box into his pocket as his gaze scatters around the hallway. Whoever closed the door must have turned into another corridor, so Jughead glances back at the administrative office one more time before taking the puzzle back out.

It takes him a little longer than the last puzzle. He figures out there are multiple secret compartments in this box, and he doesn’t find the key until he slides open the third. It is unmistakably the same skeleton key he found in Evernever’s office, though. The bow is fashioned into the head of a Gryphon, and there is a combination of Roman numerals as key wards. Jughead resolves the puzzle into its closed configuration and replaces it in the trophy case.

Like the devil, Evernever rounds the corner at the moment Jughead pockets the skeleton key.

“Jughead,” he greets without curiosity, like he expected Jughead to be there. “Weatherbee called me over to come get you. He will be wrapped up with Ms. Cooper for a little while longer.”

Jughead fingers the key in his pocket, forcing himself not to look at the puzzle box returned to its place behind the ROTC photograph of the dead kid and the man standing in front of him. “Is she okay in there?”

Evernever smiles and sweeps his hand towards the other end of the hallway as a gesture for Jughead to follow him to his office. “Ms. Cooper is fine,” the good counselor assures him. “Weatherbee just isn’t sure he will be done before curfew, and he wanted the chance to question you as well. I’m picking up the slack.”

“Lucky me,” Jughead muses, and when Edgar searches his face for sarcasm, he doesn’t find it. Jughead wasn’t exactly looking forward to an interrogation from Headmaster Weatherbee, a man with whom he had little face-to-face interaction. Edgar was, admittedly, a friendlier face, and the good counselor had defended him before.

Evernever laughs lightly and opens his office door for Jughead. “Wait in here for a moment. I haven’t seen the infamous video yet.”

“You’re going to watch it?” In his pocket, Jughead manipulates the key between his fingers, feeling out each Roman numeral in the bit. His luck really is turning. 

“You don’t want this to be an informed interrogation?”

“Right,” Jughead agrees. “Are we going to go through it frame by frame?”

Edgar chuckles again. “Do you want to?”

Jughead shrugs, but he is tamping down a proud smile, too. “Might help.” He would love to see the look on Evernever’s face during Chuck’s bawling confession. 

“I’ll hunt down a VCR. You stay put,” Edgar directs, pointing at one of the seats.

“Aye, aye, captain,” Jughead salutes, dropping into one of the chesterfields.

As soon as the door closes, he shoots to his feet and nearly vaults across the desktop with the key in hand. He sits back on his heels, licking the key before sliding it into the mouth of the unnameable beast. Jughead’s pride builds with the gratifying click of the lock. With one triumphant tug on the handle, he peers into the drawer, his curiosity piqued. This will be a fun anecdote to pass onto Kurtz next chance he gets, that strangely similar quest he started last week. One glance and his giddy expectations shatter into a million little pieces.

He launches himself away from Evernever’s desk, the Lord’s name dangling vainly from his lips.

Jughead did not know what he expected, but he did not anticipate that. He takes a deep breath and approaches the drawer once more. Reaching inside, he tilts the jar away from him, and the discolored iris bobs up at him, its cloudy cornea aimed toward him but unseeing, nerves and blood vessels trailing behind it. The school counselor Edgar Evernever has a well-preserved human eye in his desk.

Just when Jughead thinks he has wrapped his head around one anomaly at this shit-show of a school, another one presents itself. He shakes his head in disbelief, leaning forward to get a closer look at the dead eye floating in embalming fluid.

Hearing wheels squeaking on the linoleum outside, he flinches, quickly closing the drawer, relocking it, and stashing the key in his inner jacket pocket.

By the time Edgar’s shadow manifests outside the frosted glass, Jughead is back in his seat, twiddling his thumbs. The door swings open, and Evernever rattles the television set into the office, waving the videotape above his head victoriously. “Show time.”

* * *

Jughead stares up at the ceiling of his dorm room and watches the shadows of the trees wavering with the wind outside. The branches scratch at the windows. Archie snores loudly once and then shifts onto his side.

Betty was released from Headermaster Weatherbee about twenty minutes after Evernever started the videotape. Weatherbee led her to Evernever’s office where he delivered the verdict to all parties present.

The video would not be released to the public until further notice. Weatherbee would phone Chuck’s parents at the start of school on Monday. The morning after the homecoming dance, Betty had called her parents, and Alice and Hal Cooper had arranged to travel to Canterbury on Monday to chew out both the administration and Chuck’s parents.

Chuck would be suspended with expulsion pending. Nothing would happen to Nick until a more thorough inquiry had been conducted, which required Veronica’s and Nicks parents to participate in the discussions. Veronica would also have to come in for questioning.

Betty and Jughead were saddled with a few weeks of detention for harassing and basically assaulting a fellow student, which had consequences, no matter how deserved. Suspensions was also a strong possibility for both of them, but Edgar winked at Jughead as a silent promise that would never happen. It turned Jug’s stomach.

In the twenty minutes between Edgar starting the video and Weatherbee arriving with Betty, Jughead did not mention the eye he found in the good counselor’s desk. He watched the video like a good kid and reacted appropriately whenever Edgar reacted, answered the counselor’s questions when Edgar paused the video. He breathed relief when Weatherbee arrived, and he tried not to act too eager to get the hell out of there.

Weatherbee took his leave with one final warning. “Do not disclose any of this to anybody outside of this room, understand? We need to keep this investigation above board, Ms. Cooper, and you have already complicated things considerably with this video.” He gestured at the television set up next to Evernever’s desk, the video paused at the part where Betty was about to roll Chuck into the water. “I wish you or Ms. Lodge had come to me first.”

“Maybe if we felt certain something would actually be done about it, we would have been more inclined, headmaster,” Betty threw back, and Weatherbee sucked his lips between his teeth in offense.

Weatherbee turned to Evernever. “Please make sure they both return to their dorms. Your detention schedules will be released to you come Monday. Expect cleaning duty.”

When the door closed, Evernever turned off the television. Scraping his eyebrow with his thumb thoughtfully, he revealed, “That was best case scenario, my friends.” Jughead didn’t exactly get what he meant by that. In a blink, everything Evernever had ever told Jughead had become suspect, and he was replaying every conversation on fast-forward for the twenty minutes he waited on Weatherbee and the entire walk back to the dorms with Betty.

On the way back to their rooms, Betty did admit to him that detention was a slap on the wrist. Before he broke away toward the boys’ dorms, Betty latched onto his shoulders and stood on tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his mouth. “Thank you.”

“You didn’t have to ask, Betts.”

“I know.” She kissed him on the cheek. “That’s why I like you.”

Then, she was skipping off towards the girls’ dorms, and he felt his heart dislodge from his chest and drag behind her on the tether she had slipped between his ribs at some point without his notice. The image immediately makes him recall the tailing vessels of the eye, and he swallows the lump in his throat, watching the shadows play across the ceiling.

A hundred and one questions left to answer, Jughead tosses onto his side, fluffing his pillow up.

He won’t solve any riddles tonight, he tells himself. Like why Edgar Evernever has a human eye in his desk, and how that eerily resembles a quest given to Jughead by Kurtz as part of a stupid roleplaying game called Gryphons and Gargoyles. Like why there is a photograph of Edgar with the boy who was killed nearly twenty years ago the night of the yearly midnight manhunt, a Canterbury tradition. Chic Cooper lost his eye during a midnight manhunt his freshman year. Jesus Christ, that is probably Chic’s eye in that jar. What the hell is Chic Cooper’s eye doing in a jar in Edgar Evernever’s desk? What the hell was that strange ram-like creature Jughead saw in the church the night of the manhunt? Why did Kurtz’s quest lead him to that eye?

He flips onto his other side with a growl, smashing a pillow over his head to try and quiet his thoughts. The wind picks up, the branches scratching more insistently at the window.

Jug kicks his blankets to the foot of the bed. He glances at his roommate, snoring away without a care in the world. Even when troubled, Archie sleeps like the dead. It has been months since Jughead suffered from insomnia.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing at the back of his neck in frustration. His head is killing him. He is thinking too hard.

He goes to the bathroom to take a piss, hoping to take his mind off things. The buzzing fluorescent lights remind him he is nowhere close to sleeping, and he stares up at them while he perches in front of one of the urinals.

_Nothing will ever be easy for us, Forsythe_ , his mother would say with an affectionate tap of her hand on his cheek. _But, it will never be boring either_.

Jughead would love some boring, though. He would love a dose of mundane. He wants to ask Betty to the winter formal. He wants to slow dance and do those stupid couple things that happen at dances that he never got to do with Toni. And he thinks he might actually enjoy them with Betty. He would even endure the derision of Cheryl Blossom and Veronica Lodge to dip Betty under the cliché disco ball. He would endure a thousand tongue lashings from her fellow despots for one song, one other kind of tongue lashing from Betty Cooper. 

_You cannot unsee what has been seen, Forsythe_ , his mother told him that day on the main thoroughfare of Oak Harbor. There was a body in the middle of the street, the ambulance and the deputies his mother had paid off, and a crowd of people lining the sidewalks. His mother’s arm rested amiably around his shoulders, her red nails against his scalp. Her breath was hot in his ear, spicy and sweet from the rum she had shared with the man in the bar only a few feet behind them, the man that laid dead in the street in broad daylight, and no one said a word against her.

Jughead finishes his piss with a sigh of exhaustion. He wishes he could sleep and dream something nice, something pleasant, maybe something about Betty. Tucking himself back into his boxers, he heads over to the sinks, filling his imagination with better images, more agreeable fantasies than a dead body bleeding out on the tar-black or an embalmed eye in a jar. Betty’s green eyes after school in the _Blue and Gold_ office, the gold light filtering in through the fall maples, the taste of Big Red on her tongue, her warm, settled smile every time he pulls away between kisses.

He looks at himself in the mirror, sleepless bruises forming under his eyes. “You’re just tired, kid,” he tells his reflection in his father’s voice. “You just need to go back to your room and sleep.” Jughead closes his eyes and nods. All he needs is a little positive thinking, a few positive thoughts, and he can deal with the answers to those riddles tomorrow.

_Positive thoughts_ , he repeats to himself, _intentional thinking_ as Dr. Patel would say. Jug opens his eyes again, resolved to go back and fucking sleep, but he opens his eyes to complete darkness. When the bag goes over his head, the darkness gets darker.


	8. hear no evil III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Too dangerous to keep._  
>  _Too feeble to let go._  
>  _And you want to bite the hand._  
>  _Should have stopped this long ago._  
>  …
> 
> _And I should have believed Eve._   
>  _She said we had to blow._   
>  _She was the apple of my eye._   
>  _It wasn’t long ago._
> 
> Reptile by The Church

_Forsythe_. Her fingers were in his hair. He felt the mattress shift as she sat down, her fingers sinking further into his hair, the glide of her nails making him hum sleepily towards her. Her skirts smelled like smoke and the rotting muck in the marsh, and it wasn’t the first time his mother had taken a midnight walk through the woods.

Sometimes she slept-walked and ended up in his bed, mud on the sheets and under her fingernails digging into his stomach as she held him close like she was afraid he would dissolve and disappear like a bad dream. She never spoke to him during these episodes, but she spoke to him that night, and he knew then it wasn’t another one of her somnolent meanders through the marsh. He couldn’t wake her from the bad dream this time.

_Forsythe, wake up_. Even though she knew he was awake, her fingers remained tender in his hair. Her rage was quiet that night.

He thinks now about what would have happened had he pretended to remain asleep, if he had refused to wake up and follow her. Then, he laughs at himself. No alternate universe existed where Forsythe Pendleton Jones the III did not get out of that bed and follow his mother into the marsh during the zero hour on a full moon night.

Her whispery rasp was gentle and calm in his ear. _Wake up, Forsythe_. She sounded certain and clear-headed despite the smell of spiced rum on her breath.

‘Mom, I have school tomorrow,’ he mumbled into his pillow, turning his face inward and away from her.

She laughed lightly. It sounded distant and ephemeral, like spider’s silk in the wind. _You won’t need school for where we are going_. He had already missed too much school that year, hanging onto his above average class standing by tooth and nail.

_Come, Forsythe_. She scritched and scratched behind his ears in the way he liked and repeated this hushed spell over his sleepy form, hoping she could manifest her will through these quiet prayers alone, and it worked. It always worked on him. He could hear it in the back of his mind, Sweet Pea scathing in his ear, _momma’s boy_.

He let her take his hand and draw him from his childhood bed. He held his crown in his free hand like a child holds a security blanket, but he told himself he was only humoring one of her batty midnight daydreams. He would follow her into the woods and let her play Queen Mab if only to prevent her from tumbling too far into her fantasies to end up an Ophelia at the bottom of the marsh.

She barely gave him time to shove his feet into his boots, yanking on his hand towards the front door. He left his shoes unlaced, following her out into the fall night in nothing else but a t-shirt and boxer shorts.

His mother towed him through the hayfield. She took a circuitous route through the tangles of overgrown thistle and crisped Queen Anne’s lace, and he didn’t understand because the field was too bright for after midnight. He caught sight of the moon, swollen and high and haloed. He could see his breath, and he felt the cold everywhere, on his bare legs, licking through the thin cotton across his stomach. His mother eventually directed them across the dirt road that separated the field from the woods, and he looked down at her hand holding his, feeling all that cold bleeding out from her and into him.

‘Mom.’

_We’re almost there, Forsythe,_ she assured him, his boots catching on rocks and divots in the dirt road as he felt his heels drag with dread. Her black hair looked midnight blue and her skin was cold silver, and when she looked back at him, he could swear her pupils had swallowed up the whites of her eyes. _Do you see it?_

Past her shoulders, he thought the trees were dancing. With fall settling in, their limbs had grown spindly and barren, and they looked like bleached skeletons shimmying and shuddering against the pitch black-drop of the Erie’s marshlands at midnight. He blinked several times to be sure. He felt caught in the no man’s land between sleep and wakefulness, that perhaps he was back in his bed, that perhaps his mother was there with him, infecting him with her nightmares like she wanted.

Then, he made out the orange glow cast from somewhere in the eastern part of the woods, less than a quarter mile out, but the fire was bright enough to scatter shadows through the woods. It made the trees look like they were convulsing, like creatures just blessed with the gift of motion and didn’t quite know what to make of it, shuddering with paroxysms of joy but also something akin to terror and confusion.

_Tell me it looks like rapture, Forsythe_. She mused that if trees could move, the first thing they would do was dance.

He didn’t agree. Everything about trees implied thirst and conquest, their constant reaching, eons of reaching. Nature was at its heart insatiable and selfish, and he knew without a doubt, if trees could move, they would not dance. They would not celebrate their newfound freedom. They would reach for him and send him right back into the ground so they could keep reaching, thoughtlessly and selfishly. That was the guiding principle of nature, survival by any means necessary. It was a disorienting midnight thought, and he felt so cold watching the firelight dance through the trees, cold inside and out holding his mother’s hand. It felt like he was holding the hand of a corpse.

_Do you see it?_ She asked again, and he nodded thought he didn’t believe it. She smiled wide and giddy, taking his hand in both of her cold ones as she pulled him towards the fire. She looked like a little girl heading down the stairs on Christmas morning, and he thought she really was sleepwalking. His mother did not smile like some starry-eyed school girl, and she did not wax whimsy about dancing trees. She was speaking to him, sure, but she seemed caught in the throes of some waking mare, like she could see a world he could not. No, that she could see a world he did not want to see.

‘Mom, aren’t you cold?’ He asked because she was only wearing a dress, and he was freezing in his shirt and boxer shorts. She had to feel it through her lace sleeves. Her skirts reached her ankles, but the cotton was thin. His feet stopped moving when he realized what dress she was wearing. She wore it often enough that he could recognize it. It only came out on very specific occasions. 

‘Mom, who died?’ He tried to joke lightly, gripping her hand as he held them in limbo between the hayfield and the woods where the fire glowed between the trees. She stared into the trees, and he looked down to see her feet were bare and muddy to her ankles, like she had walked into the marsh.

Without turning to look at him, she whispered steam into the still night air. He could see it rise from her head like she was burning inside, even though her hand felt dead inside his own. _You will see what I see, Forsythe._

* * *

The door slams, and Jug wakes up in his bed in his own dorm room. The curtains are open, and he is sprawled on top of the covers, baking under the morning sun.

Archie unhooks his headphones and tosses them onto his own unmade bed, stripping out of his sweaty t-shirt. The CCHS Saints logo emblazoned across the front is peeling, its robe fraying around the edges. 

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Archie jokes, and Jughead smothers himself with a pillow. The sunlight is like knives in his eyes.

He mumbles something through the pillow, and Archie asks him to repeat himself.

He shifts the pillow up just enough to uncover his mouth and asks again. “Was I here when you left?”

“What? For my run?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I think so,” Archie informs him. “You were snoring really loud, like a foghorn.”

He snorts. “Yeah, right.” He knows he snores a little, but Archie is god-awful. If Jughead hadn’t been used to his dad sawing logs every night, he doubts he could have endured Archie as a roommate for an entire semester.

“You’re sure I was here,” he asks once more for good measure, tipping the pillow up to regard his roommate directly.

Archie looks confused. “Where else would you have been?”

Jughead drops the pillow over his face. “Nowhere.”

Archie must shrug it off because he grabs his towel and leaves Jughead alone for the rest of the morning before breakfast. And Jughead starts to believe it was probably just a nightmare. He feels exhausted, but it wouldn’t be the first time he was left cranky and sleep-deprived after a bout of night terrors.

At breakfast, he pinpoints Dilton Doiley seated at his usual table near the back doors and Kurtz with his sullen band of miscreants on the far eastern edge of the cafeteria. Neither of them make eye contact with Jughead, and that seems to answer some of his questions. Archie asks him if he finished the chemistry assignment, and Jughead sifts through his book-bag on autopilot, handing his roommate the completed lab report. Jug thinks he slept the entire night through but not very well, and his whole body feels it. Listening to Archie’s drawn out gratitude, Jughead goes to hide an apple in his blazer pocket. He feels the brush of crisp cardstock against his fingertips and freezes.

He glances at Dilton Doiley one more time, and in passing, spots a kid seated at the debate club’s table a few feet to Dilton’s left. Jughead is pretty certain he has never noticed the kid before, but he recognizes his face instantly. Then, he catches Kurtz glancing back at him for one punctuated moment, and Jughead feels his stomach bottom out.

It happened.

_You have seen the eye of the prophet, and the eye of the prophet has seen you._

He exchanges the apple for the card while Archie chatters on about the homecoming game last Friday. The Saints won against the Stonewall Stallions. Archie relays this useless information while he copies Jughead’s chemistry report. The golden filigree seems to jump off the cardstock. Archie gripes about having to gain ten pounds of muscle before the semester is over, and apparently Jughead needs to brand the hand of the thief by week’s end.

His gaze skirts back across the cafeteria to Kurtz smirking at him, surreptitiously flashing his own quest card across the cafeteria.

He cuts the redhead off, “Archie.”

Archie doesn’t look up from his half-finished lab report. “What’s up?”

“What’s under the church?”

“The church?” The redhead looks up for that. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay? You’re kind of all over the place this morning.” 

Archie fakes like he is going to check Jug’s temperature, and Jug smacks his hand away. “Seriously, do you know if there is anything under the church?”

“Dude, you’re kind of sounding like Polly right now.”

“Polly?”

“Betty’s sister. Remember she had that nervous breakdown, started screaming about the cults in the tombs under the church?”

Jughead disregards this old news, needing a straight answer. “Are there tombs under the church?”

“What, no.” Archie takes a deep pull off his orange juice. “Not that I know of,” he amends.

* * *

His mouth splits wider than he thought possible, tired tension in his cheeks as his chest releases the most gratifying of yawns at the moment Betty waltzes into the _Blue and Gold_ like she is made of the light and air of the golden hour. She drops her bag on the bookshelf next to the door and kicks the door closed behind her, a confident tap of her Mary Jane against the wood. The frosted glass rattles with impact, and it is such a stark disconnect when she seems to float towards him like her heels barely touch the ground.

His body collapses against one of the desks with the weight of his yawn, and she slots herself between his legs, gathering the lapels of his blazer in his hands to tug him forward. His sleepy hands find her hips, stroking the clean lines at the top of her pleats.

“I think if I really tried, I could get half my arm down there,” she muses, staring at his mouth as it finds its original shape.

He snorts sleepily, blinking down at her. His exhaustion makes her look fuzzy and aglow, and he wants to fall into all her softness and gold and sleep for a hundred years or more, order himself to ignore his Pavlovian response to engage with this new conspiracy and forget about eyes in jars and secret societies meeting in tombs beneath the church, forget about anything else but the warm feeling he gets when he holds Betty Cooper.

“Try the whole thing. You think I was lying when I said it is like Mary Poppins down there,” he jokes, smiling to himself as he strokes her hipbones, _like being home_.

“Someone looks like they need a nap,” she notes, swiping under his cheekbones, the bruised half-moons under his eyes.

“I’m wide awake now,” he promises, hauling her against him to duck his head low and press his lips to her mouth.

She smiles into the kiss for a moment before letting him slip his tongue past her lips, catching a hint of peach from her gloss and then hot cinnamon from the Big Red she borrows from Cheryl after lunch. “But, who knows,” he murmurs against her mouth. “This feels like a dream.”

She grins wide and pleased, tries to hide it behind a shy dip of her face, and he kisses her cheekbone, her temple. _God, I really like you_ , he thinks dreamily, his sleep-deprived brain almost letting it loose past his lips, but instead. “So, what’s on the agenda today, boss?”

“Well, Mr. Rebel Without a Cause.” She glances up at him through her long eyelashes with meadow green eyes, and he gets lost for a moment, like he is stuck in the hayfields in the middle of spring. “Something I think you will really enjoy.”

“Interested,” he breathes, stealing her mouth again, about ready to flip their positions and lay her out on the desk.

She lets him kiss her a few more times before reluctantly pulling back, her breathing a little more labored, and it keeps messing with his head, her reactions, the smug-inducing fact she is affected by him.

Her gaze remains on his mouth, probably on the shine of gloss he can taste there, while she tells him she plans to publish that article on Chuck and Nick, the one Weatherbee told her not to. “He thinks he can put a lid on this, but I’ve got proof now, Juggie,” she reasons with a devious curve to her smile. His insides turn to sentimental mush at the coupling of her passion for truth and justice with the silly but affectionate nickname she has bestowed upon him.

“Weatherbee doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.” His gaze locks with her defiant mouth, the way she runs her top teeth over her bottoms when she is spitting angry but doesn’t feel allowed to show it. He can see it in the tension in her jawline where he wants to kiss her messy, just to feel that anger dissolve into a whole other kind of tension.

A bolt of want slides through his chest, lighting up everything it touches in its wake, and he doesn’t know how he got so fucking lucky to land a girl like Betty Cooper. No matter how much his mother tried to convince him otherwise, Jughead never really believed in fanciful things like fate or destiny. Not until this girl turned her eyes on him for the first time that afternoon here in the _Blue and Gold_ , and he sunk into all that green like sinking into the spring hayfields, the entire world around him disappearing with nothing but the grass and the big sterile blue sky above and her.

“We’re going to need a bit more than a life-or-death confession, Betts, even if it is on tape,” he reasons without much bite because he knows she knows that. He can already see the gears turning behind her eyes, her plans unfolding with giddy anticipation with the pinch of her bottom lip between her teeth as she resists the urge to let it all spill out. He hangs on the edge of his seat for her master plans. He lives for them.

“What if I had more girls come forward,” she puts forward with a suggestive rock of her body into his, and he braces both hands on her lower back, pressing his fingers into the soft flesh above her buttocks and feeling her body curve into him like a pleased cat. “Weatherbee can shut down one voice, but if I got half a dozen girls to testify, and with the backing of their families. We built this school, Juggie.”

“Do you have some in mind?”

“I’ve got a small army, Jones,” she divulges in a heady whisper, her gaze locked on his mouth like the mere thought of destroying Chuck and Nick in the arena of public opinion is enough to get her going again. He remembers what she was like the night of homecoming, insatiable and intense and it sent his heart thudding painfully in his chest with mirrored enthusiasm.

She reaches up and twirls the hair at the nape of his neck, a question forming in the deliberate mull of her tongue over her teeth. “You want to help?”

He remembers the quest card burning a hole in his blazer pocket. It could be a prank. It could also just be a bunch of overzealous nerds with too much time on their hands playing a complicated game of make-believe. But, it could also be the starting point of something much bigger and much meatier than all the hand-waving and conjecturing he has been nitpicking in his midnight manhunt article for the last month. His short story would be child’s play if he could build a convincing enough case and uncover the true face behind the midnight manhunt death twenty years ago, perhaps figure out the possibly sinister intentions behind this seemingly innocuous roleplaying game. Especially now that there is a shred of truth buried inside Polly Cooper’s rantings and ravings about her late boyfriend’s suicide.

He looks down at Betty, wanting to fold her into his own master plans, but like her, he needs more proof without sounding absolutely bat-shit. He needs something better than his fuzzy photo of Bigfoot and a quest card. He needs to see what is under the church. And he needs to get his hands on the eye.

He can knock out two birds with one stone. Satisfy the quest card and bring down Chuck and Nick in a single killing blow. No one last night ever specified whom was the thief, and he remembers what Dilton Doiley and Trevor Brown said about the game. The limits of play were only as far as the player’s imagination, and in Jughead’s life, the thief was the perfect role for the despicable likes of Nick St. Claire. Then, he could move forward and up, and figure out whether the game was only complex roleplay or a cover for something worse, murder. If it was the former, Jug could drum up enough fresh fodder for another piece of fiction, a fitting follow-up to the _Snake Witch of the Erie_ , but that was worst-case scenario.

“Let’s give ‘em hell,” he pledges.

She exhales her excitement, candid happiness lighting up her face. Just like that, he thinks he would do anything to keep her looking at him like that, that he could live his entire life in that one look. She tilts her head to the side, studying him with a beatific smile on her face. Her thumb slides across his bottom lip, catching some leftover peach gloss.

“I seem to remember someone promising me a reward for my good deeds Saturday night,” she reminds him cheekily, staring meaningfully at his mouth, and he muses privately _, you are so much fun, Betty Cooper._

Jughead glances at the clock above the door and back down at her. He wonders how many times he could get her off in their forty-five-minute window, and his gut clenches with the challenge. He feels she might be conditioning him because he is starting to make a false association between their mystery-solving proclivities and his sex drive. Not that investigating for the school paper back in Toledo didn’t get his blood going, but it generally sent that blood in the opposite direction, and Betty is definitely redirecting it southward every time she mentions exposes and the other wonderful things he could do with his mouth in the same breath.

He decides to make his response direct and indisputable, flipping them around and hoisting her up on the desk. Her delighted gasp sends another bolt of light and want through his chest, her heady giggle churning in his stomach. He kisses her while his hands drift along the pleats of her skirt, drawing a shuddering breath when his fingers brush against the bare skin of her thighs. He stops breathing when she spreads them wider to accommodate him, and he falls into the seat behind him, instantly thinking, _thank god_ , because he wasn’t certain there was a chair to behind him.

All of a sudden, she rescinds the invitation, her socked knees knocking in front of his face. “I’ve never done this before,” she confesses softly, a new shyness in her voice. Her hands brace the edge of the desk, and he can see her knuckles are white.

Her Mary Janes rest on the arms of his chair, and he places one hand on her ankle, gently stroking the navy wool of her knee-high socks. “We don’t have to,” he tells her just as quietly, even though he was salivating like a dog with the promise of a bone only a few moments ago.

“Have you done it before?” She asks nervously, and he forgets sometimes that Betty comes from a complete different place. She did invite his hand under her skirt last time, but Jughead wonders if some of her bold behavior from the past few weeks, her initiating and encouraging what might be a little too fast even if he is full steam ahead himself, whether she is overcompensating for something. He recalls Nick St. Claire and Chuck calling her a tease, and he guesses she has received that unfair assessment from a lot of her peers. He worries this entire thing might be some one-sided game of chicken she is playing with herself, and it feels like a hundred-ton weight on his chest just considering the possibility.

“Betty.”

She gazes at him over her knees as they anxiously shift side-to-side. “Yeah?” Blue worry wets the green of her eyes, and he wants to smudge it away. He only wants to see the meadow in her eyes.

“You know I won’t think any less of you if you don’t want to do this, right?” He smooths his thumb across her ankle bone and gives her a reassuring smile. “It won’t change how I feel about you.” And, there he goes. He promised himself he would wait a little longer, but somehow she cracked his sternum at the beginning of the school year and wedged her little fingers into the in-between spaces, kept them there, kept him there, at her mercy.

She sucks on her bottom lip, but he senses some of the tension drain from her hand, some color returning to her knuckles. “How do you feel about me?”

She sounds so afraid to ask, that he sighs out a short, disbelieving laugh, shaking his head like he cannot quite believe it himself either, that a girl like Betty could fear rejection from the likes of him nor the fact that he was a goner from the first moment he stepped foot inside the _Blue and Gold_. “I like you like crazy.”

She sits up to peek at his lap, and he shrugs like he is helpless to it, not even trying to hide the conspicuous tent in his uniform trousers. “You’re beautiful, Betty, but that isn’t the only reason I like you.”

“What else then?”

He offers up a self-conscious grin, scooting the chair forward to grip both her knees and meet her gaze head-on. She doesn’t shy away, leaning forward as she studies him down the unwavering line of her nose. It splits his smile wider. “I like you stubborn and ruthless.” She narrows her eyes at him, unblinking, like she has resigned herself to disbelief.

He thinks about Archie and Veronica and sighs. “You’re loyal and forgiving.” Gathering up all the things he admires about her into one coherent thought makes his chest hurt, like his adoration for her is quickly outgrowing the space he had initially set aside for affection and feelings, a tiny sliver of his person she got her hands on him. “You don’t let me get away with my bullshit, but you still laugh at my stupid jokes.”

“They’re not stupid,” she defends readily. He hears less doubt in her voice.

“Only you think so,” he tells her. “And thanks for proving my next point. You take pity on the underdog.”

She finally laughs, and it sobers him for the next one, the most important one, he thinks, the one that informs all the rest. “And you’re willing to do anything to get to the heart of things. You’re uncompromising when it comes to the truth, Betty, and that is what I admire most about you.”

A shaky tenderness wavers at the corners of her mouth when he divulges this final sentiment, and he wonders if she truly doesn’t know how captivating she is to him. “Most guys think I’m crazy,” she confides, searching his face while she intimates this to him, like there is something wrong with him for being attracted to her.

He sweeps his thumb across her knee, chewing the inside of his cheek, restraining the impulsive rant burning like battery acid at the base of his throat. “I know the origins of the word _hysteria_ , Betty,” he confides tightly. His mother raved on more than one occasion about the condescension of certain clients and business partners, reducing her to a madwoman for their convenience, to win the argument or get the better end of the deal. They got the end of something alright.

“You have a mind of your own,” he relays, cleaning up his thoughts with a small kiss to her knee, careful to keep it over the wool. “And it is a wonderful mind.”

She breaks their staring contest with a roll of her eyes and a dismissive, “You’re a smooth talker, Jones.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up. He thought he would be more embarrassed by this confessional, but she looks more relaxed now than she did five minutes ago. “I only speak the truth, Betts.”

“Okay, truth, Jughead,” she starts, and he feels her fingers skidding behind his ear. Maybe she can tell he likes to be touched there. Maybe she reads him better than he originally thought. “Have you done this before?”

“What? Confessed to a girl I liked?”

She rolls her eyes again, shaking her head, smiling, and he marvels at his ability to bring these reactions from her just moments after she looked about ready to fracture from festering self-doubt. “No, I mean this?” She wiggles her knees in front of his face.

“I’ve never told a girl I liked her,” he admits first because he wants her to know that. He never liked any girls enough to confess that much, not even Toni. That would have been too much emotional ammunition to hand over to his former editor-in-chief. “But this?” He gestures at her knees. “Yeah, I’ve done this before.”

But, she is stuck on the first thing, confusion infusing her surprise, and though he thinks she may be drawing some less-than-flattering conclusions about his confession, her creased brow manages to be cute. “Can you have one without the other?”

For Toni, it was a rule. “I know that sounds bad,” he concedes. _No masks, Jones_ , he warns himself, taking a deep breath. “I was with a girl who was my, for lack of a better term, friend with some benefits.”

He hears a low curt sound of acknowledgement from the back of her throat, but the cogs and whirligigs of thought are still working behind her eyes as she continues to process this new information. “Did you like her?”

He sucks his teeth, trying to figure out how best to answer that. “I did, but I never told her that,” he discloses for the first time, and it feels good, saying it out loud.

“Why not?”

“Because she didn’t like me back.”

“How do you know?” She is true to form, aiming straight for the heart of things, unwavering in her pursuit of the truth. Betty Cooper does not assume; she finds proof.

“She told me flat out from the beginning.” It was one of the things he initially liked about Toni. She was honest with him about her intentions, even when she was using him to make Peaches jealous. He knew where he stood with her.

Betty’s gaze falls suddenly, sympathy dragging her smile down, and Jughead feels like he missed something.

“What is it?”

“Didn’t that hurt?”

He sighs with more affection than he thinks possible, more for Betty’s concern for his feelings than the regret he barely feels anymore for letting himself get wrapped up in a girl who would never reciprocate his interest. It feels like forever ago now, or Betty easily outshines all his past misfortunes. “I like that about you, too.”

“What?”

“You’re compassionate.” He kisses her knee again. “She wasn’t.” Toni was honest, but she was not kind. At least, not to him.

He feels Betty bend forward, her warmth surrounding him. Her hands glide down his shoulder blades as she presses her mouth to a kiss to the top of his head, the heat from her mouth finding its way through his crown. “I like you, too, Jughead,” she whispers. It is a seemingly harmless combination of words, but his ribcage gives out anyway, and he buries his forehead against her knee with the weight of them, feeling his heart slip out from his chest cavity and into the palm of her hand.

Her nails glide along his back as she sits up, tracing sparks across his skin, and he shivers, rising with her, gazing up into her unbelievably green eyes. “And I think I really want you to,” she hiccups here, biting her lip. Pink sits high on her cheeks, her skin like a ripe peach, and then a coy but blinding smile breaks across her mouth. “Go down on me.”

He groans, gripping both her knees in his hands. “Betty Cooper, it would be my pleasure.” He glances up at the clock once more. They still have twenty minutes and change. He shrugs out of his blazer and unbuttons his shirt cuffs, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows.

“You’re acting like this is some serious wet work,” she muses, and the double entendre floors him, sending a rush of blood to his dick.

“Guess you’re gonna find out,” he throws back, waiting patiently for her to part her thighs, his palms cradling the rounds of her knees.

She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth as her knees separate. He can tell her toes are squirming in her Mary Janes with anticipation, soles worrying the arms of his chair. He maintains eye contact as his fingers graze up the outside of her bare thighs. When his fingers hook under her panties, her lips part with an expectant little inhale. He can see the tension in her thighs, in the grip of her hands on the desk edge as he draws them down to her knees. She closes her legs briefly to let him slip them down her calves, finally unhooking them from the clunky sole of her left Mary Jane.

“Okay?” He asks, curling his hands around her ankles.

It is delayed, but she nods. He mimes the movement, encouraging her to hook her legs over his shoulders as he scoots the chair farther forward. She clenches her gut in anticipation when he leans forward, tracing his approach like a bird on a low lying branch that knows it can fly away whenever it wants to. She will always have an out with him, and he wants her to know that, so he doesn’t hold her too tightly. He doesn’t move too quickly.

Yet with her skirt bunched up around her hips and her bare pussy mere inches from his mouth, he cannot help ruminating on all the strange machinations and unforeseeable coincidences that landed him here in this moment. What would have happened if he had gone for a smoke on the patio instead of Cheryl’s balcony that night? What kinds of forces were at work that landed him as Archie’s roommate and not someone like Dilton Doiley? Why is she the editor of the school newspaper and not the yearbook? Ever choice he has made since arriving at Canterbury has led him to this girl, and his first instinct is to doubt. Precedence has never been kind to him. His imagination, his nature screams for it, but his heart keeps undermining his rational and reasonable lines of thinking.

He doesn’t think he has ever wanted anything more. He doesn’t think he has ever wanted as much as he does now, and it is all he seems to feel lately, incessant want. It is unfamiliar because he never let himself want anything. Wanting meant hope. Wanting Canterbury was the first time in a long time Jughead let himself hope for anything, and then he got in and that feeling of completion became addictive. The universe gave him an inch, and he suddenly wanted the whole goddamn mile.

He wanted to succeed at Canterbury. He wanted to be friends with Archie Andrews. He wanted to solve the Gryphons and Gargoyles mystery. More than anything he wants Betty Cooper and more. He wants to get into the same Ivy with her, write exposes with her, let her wield the red pen of judgment over drafts of his crime thrillers. He wants to follow her into every investigatory blind they find themselves embroiled in. He looks at Betty Cooper and considers for the first time a future with someone else in it. He looks at her and wants a future. He looks at her, and he hopes for it.

Betty mumbles her embarrassment, moving to sit up when he hesitates too long. He feels the shift of her thighs off his shoulders, and his thoughts instantly blank save one – he will do anything to make sure Betty never thinks another guy can satisfy her the way he fully plans to, the way he is starting to believe he can. His head drops like a hawk diving for prey, and he seals his mouth over her pussy to drive the last of her insecurities out the window.

Closing his lips around her clit, he lashes the tiny nub with his tongue. She falls back hard on her elbows, her head tilting back so he can only see the stunned _O_ of her pink mouth, taking the Lord’s name in vain.

Her first instinct is to clamp her thighs around her head, but he braces his hands on either side, keeps the vise grip of her thighs pried apart as he works his mouth over her pussy, his teeth grazing her clit as he prods her with his tongue. The heels of her Mary Janes dig into his shoulders. Her hand sinks underneath his beanie and into his hair to ground herself, like it is all she can do but hold on. He feels his crown slip off somewhere behind him, but he maintains his focus, spelling his name against her clit while she mouths off a string of curses intermingled with his name.

She is unaware of how loud she is moaning, keening, cursing, and he wonders with a passing flicker of amusement if Dr. Benzene’s sixth period chemistry class can hear her overwhelmed cries from next door. He smiles against her pussy, emboldened as he increases the pressure and pace of his tongue. Any moment, the dean or Headmaster Weatherbee could appear to end this whole play, but he is competing against himself a little, too.

Betty falls back against the desktop, her fingers tugging as insistently at his hair as his tongue propels her towards the edge of oblivion. If the shuddering in her thighs or the increasing pitch of her cries is anything to go by, she is close.

Closer than he thought when he polishes off the _S_ in Jones and her back arches off the desk, her palm hard against the back of his skull as she shoves his mouth against her pussy. She bites her wrist to keep from screaming, rolling her hips against his mouth, and now it is Jughead’s turn to hold on for dear life, keeping his lips sealed over her clit as she rides out her orgasm against his face. A flood of slick in his mouth, he groans, using his leverage on her hips to jerk her body towards him. She twists against him, her whole body spasming, caught up in the throes of her completion like she doesn’t remember where she is, and it is the most captivating thing Jughead has ever witnessed.

Toni only gave him two compliments during their tenure as friends with benefits, but it was more like two rolled into one. She commended him for his clever tongue, both on the page and. Well.

“Christ, Juggie,” Betty swears, pushing his face away when it gets to be too much. Chest heaving, she props herself up on her elbows and gazes down at him like she cannot believe what just transpired. “Holy shit.”

He props his chin on her thigh. “What did you expect?” Glancing at the clock, they have a little less than twenty minutes left of their independent study if Dr. Benzene hasn’t notified the headmaster yet. He could work in a few more.

“I mean,” she starts, gathering her breath. “Veronica said.” She reaches down to touch herself, her mouth falling open in surprise at how wet she is, how wet he made her. _Wet work indeed_. Her fascination with it manages to turn him on even more.

“You want to go again?” He offers, shifting her thighs higher on his shoulders. “I did promise you the whole period.”

Her fingers sink into his hair, nudging him back. He gives her a wry look because she inadvertently just smeared her arousal in his hair. Lucky he is married to that beanie. “Sorry,” she apologizes quickly, pulling her hand away. “I’m just not.” He doesn’t understand why everything she does incites him, her loss for words, her clumsiness with her slick, the curiosity and awe that she cannot seem to shake. “I mean, what about you?”

He smiles. “You’re sweet, Betty.”

She narrows her eyes at him, grabbing his shoulder and pushing him back into the chair none too gently. “No, I mean it.”

“Sometimes,” she gripes, unhooking her legs from his shoulders. “You’re so noble, it’s annoying.”

He gives a pointed look at the clock, and she waves it off in exasperation. “We can be a little late to English, Juggie.” They already have at least a month’s worth of detention. What is one more week?

He exhales roughly and leans back in his chair, his gaze flickering back and forth between her flushed cheeks and her wet pussy, pride heady and full in his chest as he palms himself through his trousers. He wants to. God, he fucking wants to. “Fine,” he concedes. “Stay like that.”

He figures he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, unbuttoning his pants with one hand. She watches him drag the zipper down, and it feels like she is dissecting him, like she has a million intrusive questions churning through the overactive machinery of her restless mind. When her thighs start to drift closed, he snatches one knee, directs it outward. “I said stay like that.”

Her face scrunches up in a pout. “I don’t get to participate?”

The thought sends a jolt of pleasure through his gut. He grips himself loosely through his jockey shorts, his breaths deep but measured as he regards her seated on the desktop, her uniform shirt wrinkled and ponytail askew. She looks ravaged, and his dick twitches in his hand, begging for attention. It might be too much to hope for her active participation, but he extends the invitation anyway. “Do you want to?”

Her eyes flicker uncertainly to the shape of him clear through his jockeys, and he wonders what she thinks. She looks curious but apprehensive, and he understands when she asks if she can watch first. He nods, stroking himself lazily through the cotton, but then she hops off the desk and declares, “Not like this, though.”

Betty beckons for his hand, and his gaze slides from the smear of arousal she left on the ink blotter to her outstretched hand. His mind is turning to sludge at the thought of Betty Cooper watching him get himself off, that she wants to watch him. He barely registers her sigh of exasperation, but he feels her steal his free hand and lets her drag him to his feet.

He feels like he fell off her wavelength at some point until she directs him to the arm-chair in the corner by the windows, more a loveseat than an armchair. Her hands on his shoulders, she swings him about-face and shoves him none too gently into the chair. He is about to make a quip about the change in venue when she plants her knees on either side of his hips and takes a seat on his thighs.

“Front row seats,” she excuses, her eyebrows raised like she is daring him to criticize her, and it strange and cute and better than before, he can admit. He can touch her like this. He wants to touch her like this. 

“No complaints here,” he tells her, using one hand to hold her skirt back while his other peels his jockeys down to pull his cock out.

She inhales in surprise when she finally sees it, and he watches her study his movements like she is learning a complicated dissection procedure in anatomy. “I promise it’s not rocket science,” he assures her, his voice rough to his own ears as he reaches under her skirt.

She startles when she feels his fingers running across her wet folds, gathering her slick. “What are you doing? I said.”

He cuts her off. “Relax.” Jughead pulls his hand out, shows her the stickiness of her arousal between his fingers, and her cheeks look like they are burning. She looks about ready to die from embarrassment when he wraps his wet fingers around his cock and gives himself one good, gratifying stroke, thinking privately to himself, _fucking finally_.

“Can I?” He inquires gently, playing with one of the buttons on her shirt. She nods, and his hand continues to work over himself, slow uniform strokes while she unbuttons her uniform shirt to reveal her simple white bra.

“Do you want me to?” She offers, fiddling with the front clasp.

“Only if you’re okay with it,” he tells her, but he prays for it. She doesn’t hesitate, unclipping the front and letting her perfect breasts spill out of the cups. He licks his lips and reaches for one, nuzzling the side with his knuckles. She sighs when he cups her, pressing her breast into his hand as she slides a couple inches forward on his thighs, and the pressure is maddening.

He thinks she doesn’t know where to look, and then he realizes she cannot decide on where she doesn’t want to look, studying the cadence of his strokes and immediately raising her eyes to his, drinking in the heavy-lidded want she surely sees there, the tightness in his jaw as he works himself up slowly, trying to relish it. Her eyes keep moving around, like she wants to take it all in. He groans, flexing his hips up into his hand, jostling her, and he barely hears it, a small animal noise in the back of her throat, like she likes it, like it turns her on.

He kneads her breast, picking up the pace, and then he feels her hand close over his own. “Can I touch you?” Her sweet, torturous whisper in his ear, and he is nodding dumbly. He releases himself to cradle her hand in his, bringing it up to his mouth and licking one solid stripe from the heel to the tip of her middle finger. He hears it again, the tiny, needy lament in her throat, and he snatches her mouth with his own as he curls her hand around his cock, guiding her on the pace and pressure he likes, that he needs at this point.

“I’m gonna come soon,” he warns, nipping her bottom lip.

She nods, sitting back on his thighs so she can watch, and it has to be one of the hottest things he has ever seen. He feels the knot winding up in his gut, rocking his hips up into her, and he tells her, _faster, mm, right there_. In preparation, he flips her skirt up, directing her hand, feeling the head of his cock brushing back and forth against the soft, downy skin of her pale thigh. The image, her green eyes watching him in fascination, her soft hand stroking his cock, and the coil in his belly snaps. He releases a groan like she is gutting him, his cock pulsing in her hand as he spills onto her thigh, and she seems enthralled with it, a pleased smile floating around the corners of her parted lips. It is too much, too fucking much. She is going to be the death of him, this strange _rara avis_.

He palms her breast lazily, basking in the afterglow for a moment, waiting for his pulse to return to some semblance of normal. Tall order with her around. When she dips her fingers in his come on her thigh, testing its consistency, he nearly makes an off-color joke about being her science project. Then, she tastes it experimentally, and he thinks his eyes are going to bust out of his skull.

“What are you doing?”

She slips her index finger out of her mouth with a wet pop. “I was wondering what it would be like to go down on you.”

In disbelief, “What?”

“I don’t think it would be so bad.” Then, she sidles up close to him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I think I want to go again,” she whispers in his ear, twisting stray strands at the nape of his neck. He peeks up at the clock. The eighth period bell is about to ring. They could play truant, but they aren’t exactly in the administration’s good graces at the moment.

“How about after school?” He suggests, trying not to sound too eager.

Her blunt amusement tells him he failed miserably, but he could not care less. He wants her to know that he wants her, all the time, any time, as much as she is willing to give. He wants her to know someone wants her.

“I have that meeting with my parents and Weatherbee, remember?” She reminds him, a disappointed tilt to her tone.

“Okay, after,” he tries.

That sparks her interest. “Oh? Here in the _Blue and Gold_?”

“Yeah.”

Her fingers skim behind his ears again, an affection in her gaze that wasn’t there before, and it fills him with hope, more hope when she smiles and confirms, “It’s a date.”

* * *

‘You have seen the eye of the prophet, and the eye of the prophet has seen you.’

The words echoed in the cavernous space as someone tore the black bag off his head. Someone’s hand landed on his shoulder, a silent command to remain on his knees, and Jug automatically reasoned with himself it could not be too dire if his hands were untied.

He gave the hand a body, canting his head to trace the wrist to the shoulder, but the body had no face, a formless hooded figure towering behind him wearing a plague doctor’s mask. The long black rubber beak curved down towards him, its mouth a fathomless, mute line. As its empty sockets regarded him down the length of its beak, the hand’s grip tightened on his shoulder, thumb digging into the pressure point behind his scapula, and Jughead winced, took that as his cue to turn his gaze forward.

‘Please welcome our new competitors,’ the voice called through the vacuous space. Jug could feel the echo of it in his chest.

The space was poorly lit despite the hundreds of candles lined up along the walls and the edges of what looked like individual crypts, but the draft made every tiny flame shiver and dance dangerously towards expiry. He could hope for that. He could work with complete darkness. The convulsing flames sent the shadows into fitful paroxysms, and so nothing looked quite close to its reality. 

He stared past the hooded figure that had spoken, trying to make out the shapes behind him. As his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, it looked like an altar of rot, a shrine of decaying animals and molding fruit on a decomposing forest floor, ribcages unfolding form clumps of moss and black river rock, the toothy grins of foxes and distressed gapes of woodland rodents holding molding apples and shriveled clusters of grapes in their partially decomposed jaws. The smell of the rotting altar and moldering stone made him feel sick to his stomach, but it did not compare to the churning he got in his gut when his eyes alighted on the central conceit of the altar, swallowing thickly at the sight of the monstrous ram’s head, the same one he had witnessed the night of the midnight manhunt.

‘Most of you are well aware of why you are here,’ the central figure declared, taking a step towards the altar. ‘You have all reached the final phase in your quest for Ascension.’

Jughead’s eyes sidled to the left and then slowly to the right, cognizant then that he was not alone, that he was just one in a lineup of several. Firelight leapt across the faces on either side of him, each kneeling body granted a silent sentinel of their own.

The hooded figure approached the altar, his obscured face turned away, and Jughead took the opportunity to size up his compatriots, cataloguing what distinctive features he could discern in the dim. He recognized two instantly – Dilton Doiley immediately to his right and Jonathon Kurtz two bodies to his left. Kurtz shifted his beady gaze over, and he appeared to be resisting the urge to grin, a Cheshire smirk threatening on the corners of his thin lips. Dilton Doiley seemed utterly perplexed by Jughead’s presence in the tomb.

‘You are tasked with completing a series of quests.’ The hooded figure wrapped his hands around one of the candles on the altar, lifting it up above his head, and everyone’s attention drifted forward. Black wax dripped down his hand, disappearing inside the sleeve of his deep red robes. ‘There will be five in all. They will be no easy feat, and your tasks will grow more difficult as you approach Ascension.’

Something moved in Jughead’s periphery, and his gaze veered to another hooded individual making his way down the line. In the stranger’s hands was a deck of cards fanned out for each participant.

‘The rules are simple, fellow travelers,’ the hooded leader revealed, approaching them with the lit candle clutched in his hand, hot black wax bleeding across his skin like rotting veins. ‘Whomever completes their five quests first achieves Ascension.’

The hooded leader stopped in front of Jughead, holding the candle above his upturned face at the same moment the deck of cards manifested under his nose.

‘Choose your fate, hellcaster,’ the leader demanded, and Jughead knew then who was under the hood.

Jug sat back on his heels, regarding the quest cards spread before him. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake. I didn’t sign up for this.’

The leader and the deck of cards remained unmoved. ‘The eye of the prophet does not make mistakes, hellcaster.’

Jughead snorted, scratching his nose. The hand on his shoulder tightened once more, and he felt the increasing pressure of the thumb digging underneath his scapula. ‘I can’t opt out?’ He tried, hunching his shoulders as the thumb dug deeper. Jughead waited to hear Archie’s snore break through the phantasmagoria playing out before him. It seemed inevitably a dream.

‘You cannot escape your fate,’ the leader said simply. 

‘What happens when I try?’ He threw back cheekily, cringing as another hand landed on his other shoulder, an onslaught ensuing on both pressure points. He had felt similar discomforts in dreams before. It could still be nothing but a bad dream.

‘Then, you do not leave this tomb, Hellcaster Jones,’ the hooded figure boomed, a stark contrast to his pragmatic tone from before, and even Jughead flinched.

Jughead bit the inside of his cheek, reaching up for the deck of quest cards fanned out in front of his face. ‘Whatever you say, good counselor.’

At the moment he chose his fate, the candle tipped forward, dripping a puddle of scalding wax across the back of Jug’s hand. He hissed, yanking his hand back with the quest card clutched between his fingers. _Pain_.

‘This seals your fate, hellcaster,’ the hooded leader proclaimed, moving on to the next participant, sealing his hand with hot wax in the same manner. He circled back around to the rest of the participants to secure their contracts, and Jughead, cradling his burned hand, wondered if this was the usual practice or if the good counselor had come up with the ritual on the fly just to spite him.

Once all the participants had chosen their quest cards and scraped the cooled wax from their singed hands, the hooded leader replaced the black candle on the altar. ‘I warn you all now,’ he began, stroking the mandible on the ram’s skull. ‘Do not take your tasks lightly. Failure has consequences, fellow travelers.’

Jughead looked down at his quest card for the first time, squinting to read the intricate calligraphy in the dim light. _Brand the hand of the thief._

The good counselor braced his hands underneath the ram’s skull, lifting it from the decaying shrine, and Jughead looked up from his quest card just as Edgar placed the skull over his own, letting it settle before turning to regard the newest recruits. He raised his palms towards them, black wax crusted across his palms and between his knuckles, and Jughead felt the tightness of his own skin under the wax still sealed to the back of his reaching hand, tightness and pain and the smell of rot and the damp draft of the tomb and the crisp recoil of the quest card between his fingers. Jughead felt on every surface of his senses even as his zero-hour mind filtered every speck of evidence into his black box of nightmares and dreams.

‘Let the games begin.’

The good counselor announced it, but Jughead did not hear it. Even after he woke up and pieced together the madness of his midnight descent into the tombs, he did not hear it. The good counselor fired the warning shot, but Jughead failed to hear it.


	9. speak no evil III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I wanted to be with you alone_   
>  _And talk about the weather_   
>  _But traditions I can trace against the child in your face_   
>  _Won’t escape my attention_   
>  _And gentle persuasion_   
>  _I’m lost in admiration, could I need you this much?_   
>  _You keep your distance with a system of touch_   
>  _Oh, you’re wasting my time_   
>  _You’re just, just, just wasting my time_
> 
> Head Over Heels by Tears for Fears

It is pitch dark in the janitor’s closet, but he closes his eyes to fine tune the remainder of his senses. Leaning his forehead against the door, he must be careful not to fall asleep. Dregs of adrenaline and lingering anger help him stay awake. His breathing shallows, but a flare of déjà vu licks the backs of his eyelids when his hand curls around the cold round of the metal door handle. It is smoother than the lion’s head on the French doors to Cheryl Blossom’s balcony, but the voices on the other side and the emotions they stir are just the same.

Jug barely had time to shut his locker before they rounded the corner. He fell into the darkness at the moment Nick’s gaze shifted towards the end of the hallway, swinging the closet door closed before Chuck cleared the corner.

Something disturbed skitters back into its hole behind him. The sharp smell of the antiseptic detergents does nothing to conceal the fact the mop is mildewing, left to stew in its moldy damp for however many days, and Jughead wonders if he drew on the pull-chain for the single lightbulb dangling above his head, would he find himself surrounded by decay.

Instead, he closes his eyes to focus on the hurried whispers he can barely hear through the door. He feels like he missed too much already, missed what has already passed between the two boys in the hallway and what has transpired in the previous weeks, and he worries he was practically spoon-fed hints back when this all began, but he was too distracted by the lesser picture. 

“I told you to keep it to yourself, Clayton,” Nick hisses, desperation and venom waiting like a cornered rattler. Jughead wonders if Nick is one of the snakes that at least has the common decency to yell surprise.

“I didn’t think,” Chuck starts, and the lockers clatter, Nick’s voice coming in tight and hostile, “That’s right. You didn’t think. You put my fucking name in the hat, Chuck, and you didn’t think.”

“Nick, come on, we can spin this. We’ve done it before. Trust me, it’s Betty’s word against ours. Hell, it’s not even Betty. It’s that fucking parasite latched onto her,” Chuck argues, his tone subdued and mollifying despite the cut of his words. A hard cut, but Jughead catches the tinge of fear, catches it all the way from inside the janitor’s closet.

“I don’t give a shit, Chuck. I told you to keep a tight lid on it. Now, my parents are here, and I’m already skating on thin ice with them. The fucking Lodges are here, Chuck. The Lodges,” he rails, ending on an exclamation, the lockers rattling softer this time. He breaks his voice on the next part, “Do you understand? Does that register with you at all?”

A frustrated exhale and the click of oxford soles across the tiled floors, Nick moving away from Chuck. A shiver runs down the back of Jughead’s neck. It feels good for a moment, a brief flush of vindication down his spine, and then awful, more awful when Nick says, “We’re both going to lose the game.” Jughead hears chewing, something small worrying the lacquered paper of a bag of chemicals in the corner, emboldened out of its hole by Jug’s stillness. “Our current position isn’t exactly ideal, and you know what happens when we fail, right, Chuck?” A trash can crashes to the ground. “Christ, we’re so fucked.”

Jughead tries to reason with himself that the reference to the game could mean anything. Kurtz mentioned something about a list or a playbook weeks ago, and given the context, Nick could be referring to that. Besides, Nick and Chuck do not seem likely players in a roleplaying game for overzealous nerds whom abduct individuals in the middle of the night and spirit them away into the supposed tombs underneath the church. Yet, whatever sick game Nick and Chuck are playing, why does Nick sound worried about the stakes, about losing?

Jughead knocks his forehead lightly against the door, rubbing it back and forth. If it isn’t one thing, then it is another, and he is losing steam. One more thing to add to the ever-expanding list of disconcerting mysteries popping up in this madhouse, like a plague. Jughead was supposed to get in, get his diploma, write a few more good ones, and waltz into the nearest Ivy. That was the plan. That was all he intended. _Nothing will ever be easy for us, Forsythe, but it will never be boring either_. For the first time, Jughead wonders if these things actively seek him out or he has a lousy knack for drumming up his own trouble just as his mother said, just as all the others said. 

“Hey, hey, Nick, we’re not fucked,” Chuck assures him, more to convince himself than the oxfords pacing up and down the hallway. “We can get it back. We’ve got one freebie, okay.”

“One freebie, my sweet dick,” Nick spits, kicking what sounds like an empty soda can across the hallway. “It’s our heads on the pike this time, Chuck, and I’m not sticking around to find out what the hell that means, one freebie.” He scoffs, another piece of trash skittering down the hallway. “So, fuck this, you’re on your own.”

“Nick, hey wait.” The lockers clatter again, and Chuck grunts. The sound of Nick’s hard soles fades down the hallway at a clipped pace. “You go, I’m gonna do this without you, and then it’s your ass! Not mine!”

Jug cannot hear Nick’s oxfords anymore, but he does catch Chuck swear under his breath. Something crashes against a locker, and Chuck curses, louder this time. In a few moments, his sneakers are squeaking around the corner, and Jughead finally releases the breath that’s been lodged in his chest for the past five minutes.

He inhales once more and jerks down on the door handle. For a moment, he expects to be back in Cheryl Blossom’s bedroom, ready to reach for the good book once more, but he finds himself spilling out into the bright hallways of Canterbury instead, sunlight streaming in through the leaded windows. There is an overturned trash can, scattered trash, the only evidence that what he heard actually transpired, that his sleep-deprived brain didn’t dream it.

Jug slips his hand into his blazer pocket where he keeps it at all times, brushing against the stiff card stock. It is like a nervous tick now, and he needs it, the constant reminder that none of this is imagined. It wasn’t something he was afforded with his mother, and even now, the rational part of his brain continues to reconcile ever instance of irrationality she threw at him. Stroking the quest card, feeling the embossed gold filigree on its innocuous back like any regular playing card, he closes his eyes and sees firelight in the tree line. He feels himself swaying with the imaginary play of light. If he could get a couple hours of sleep, he could make sense of things. If he could only rest a while, the nowhere spaces in the back of his head, the places his mother still haunts, wouldn’t be able to whisper logical inconsistencies as explanation for what is happening here.

A gaggle of freshmen tumbles out into the hallway from one of the classrooms. The laughter startles him, and he yanks his hand from his pocket. The group of girls stops in the middle of the hallway, stops laughing, sees him with garbage strewn about his feet, the overturned trash can.

One of them is vaguely familiar, and she recognizes his hat. It is the girl from the midnight manhunt, the one he flushed out of the hedges. She steps forward, venturing ahead of her classmates. “Hey, are you okay?”

He wonders how he must look to draw that sort of question. Reaching back into his pocket, he fingers the quest card briefly before he slips it out. The light catches the curls of gold, reminding him for a moment of Betty’s hair in the late afternoon. He presents it to the girls, flipping it so they can see both faces. “Have you ever seen one of these before?”

The girl gives him a funny look, and he wonders if he missed something important, if he will always be the outsider whom will never comprehend this otherworld. Yet, he feels closer than he thinks, like this is one side on a coin, and he has existed on its opposite face for quite some time and never knew it. A hundred questions churn in his head, but he senses the answers bobbing about in that stew as well. _You will see what I see, Forsythe._

“That’s a quest card,” she states simply, like it should be obvious. “Are you playing?”

He doesn’t know how to broach that question. He doesn’t know how many games there are, how many he might be playing, if they are even different games with separate sets of rules and players. That strikes a chord of fear in his gut. He has no idea how many players are on the board, the real board. Which one is the real board? Jughead glances at the card, rereading the disturbing directive penned in exquisite golden calligraphy. Was that the good counselor’s intent then, a smoke and mirrors horror show to conceal the real players.

“Yeah,” he plays off, following it up with a short laugh as he twirls the card between his fingers. “Level one hellcaster.” Like it is some small thing, something to pass the time.

“That’s not a level one quest card.”

His gaze shoots back up, and she is giving him that look again, like he has no clue as to how the world works, how their world works. “What?”

“You said you were a level one,” she repeats for him slowly. “That’s a level fifteen card.”

“How can you tell?”

“The gold,” she explains, reaching into the book-bag slung on her shoulder to show him a similar card with metallic red filigree. “Anything fifteen and above is gold. This is red, levels ten to fourteen. That is gold, the highest level.”

Jughead swallows tightly but smiles through it, shelving the card back into his pocket. “So it is.” Evernever dropped him into the deep end.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” She tries again, taking another step forward.

“Positive,” he assures her, flashing her an a-okay with thumb and forefinger rounded even though ants are crawling across his skin. “I guess I have a lot to learn about this game.”

“Don’t look so nervous then,” the girl reasons. “It’s just a game.”

Jughead smiles in response, trying for disarming, but he is so damn tired. If someone nudged his shoulder, he is certain he would be half-asleep before his head hit the ground. He gives the girls a two-fingered salute and spins on his heels in the opposite direction, nearly capsizes in the middle of the hallway. He is running on fumes.

* * *

The eye was a prop. That is the only logical explanation that boils to the top. If he had the forethought to unscrew the top off the jar and pluck it out of that disturbing yellow soup, it would have been rubber. Halloween is right around the corner. It was probably something Evernever confiscated from a student, a prop eye for a haunted house, a very realistic rubber eye floating in fake embalming fluid in a mason jar in the school guidance counselor’s office.

The fraying threads of Jughead’s rational forebrain attempt to find a foothold in this sounder reasoning, but they keep slipping off like Jughead’s forehead on the glass of the trophy case outside Weatherbee’s office. He braces his forearm against the glass to steady himself, blinking blurry-eyed through the glass. The puzzle box is gone, and there is no evidence to suggest it was ever there in the first place.

Prop or not doesn’t explain why Jughead found that key in a hidden puzzle box in the school’s trophy case, and why that key led him to the guidance counselor’s desk, and why all the clues and steps leading him to that desk drawer are eerily similar to details in a quest given to him by Jonathon Kurtz. Prop or not doesn’t explain being abducted in the middle of the night and practically branded with candle wax by a bunch of hooded roleplaying nuts, doesn’t explain that creature he saw in the church, doesn’t explain half this bat-shit. He starts thinking maybe he should call his dad, get in touch with Dr. Patel.

Betty has been in her meeting for at least an hour, and he wants to sink onto the tile and fall asleep, but he wills himself awake. Chuck and Nick’s conversation isn’t sitting well. That and Jughead never functions well on an empty stomach, let alone an empty stomach and a few hours of sleep. Maybe if he sat down with Betty and unloaded half the absurdities roiling in his head, it might offer him some clarity. She does have a gift for sifting through the bullshit, especially his own.

“Dead on your feet?”

Jughead startles upright, his heart lurching into his throat. He reflexively reaches up to tug his beanie down further over his head.

Edgar Evernever appears at his side like he just stepped out of the woodwork, hands clasped in front, betraying no sense of urgency or surprise at Jughead’s reaction. The good counselor glances at the trophy case, the smear of oil from Jug’s forehead, a remnant circle of fog from his sleepy breaths, and turns back to his charge, smiling that inside joke smile that sends the ants marching across Jug’s skin. “In my office, please, Jughead.” It is not a request, politeness or no.

Jughead sees firelight dancing over Edgar’s shoulder and feels all the blood draining into his hands and feet. Edgar waits patiently for him to make the first move, staring at him like he knows how this will go, how Jughead will allow himself to be herded towards his office, his deadly curiosity getting the best of him. For the first time, Jughead has no desire to prove him right out of spite. He realizes with a strange sense of self-preservation that he is nowhere near prepared to confront whatever existential hell awaits him behind the good counselor’s office door.

The door to Headmaster Weatherbee’s office swings wide, smacking the wall behind it. Veronica Lodge stomps out into the hallway looking ready to bite the head off a puppy. The couple succeeding her looks obliged to provide her the pick of the litter.

Veronica’s hawk eye zeroes in on Jughead. He feels the redirection of her rage rushing towards him, can practically taste the acid of her resentment from across the hallway. Jughead opens his mouth to say something, anything, the first word popping into his head, but before the lackluster _sorry_ can leave his lips, Veronica sneers and twists away on her too-high heels, followed closely by whom Jughead can only assume are mommy and daddy Lodge. He feels like he has to sneeze, the remnants of Veronica’s rancor tickling the back of this throat.

“Jughead,” Edgar bids softly from his side, and then Jug does sneeze, full body, sending him back into the glass case. Edgar’s hand hovers mid-air, ready to either snatch Jug by the back of the neck and haul him to his office or keep him from sliding to the ground in exhaustion. If Jughead didn’t know better, he would say Evernever looks genuinely worried for his wellbeing, but he has no desire to wait and find out, wiping his face on the back of his sleeve and sidestepping a safe three feet from the good counselor.

_Goddamnit_ , _if you’re getting sick_ , he scolds as the remainder of the party empties out of Weatherbee’s office.

A blonde middle-aged woman in a stiff, pale pink dress suit exits first, swirling her index finger in the air as she rails about censorship and freedom of the press, Betty trailing behind, her face a mixture of nausea and nerves, yet when she spots Jughead standing by the trophy case, her features tighten into alarm.

The woman who must be Betty’s mother turns to drive the point home to her daughter, but hitches on the deer in headlights look that buzzes right past her and lands on a stranded Jughead Jones. He feels another bad sneeze itching the roof of his mouth. When the woman swivels back around, her eyes seal Jughead to the ground where he stands.

He forgets what to do with his hands, feeling his fingers contorting into bizarre positions for nothing better to do. To save himself any more embarrassment, he stuffs them into his blazer pockets, feels the quest card again and remembers Evernever standing off to the side, silent and expectant, as patient as a snake in the grass, waiting for another opportunity to drag him back to his office. 

Jughead focuses on Betty’s mother instead. It might be his only chance to get out of whatever the good counselor has planned for him behind the door to 314.

The first thing Jughead thinks is Betty must have her father’s eyes because though mother and daughter bare a resemblance around the cheeks and the ears, those cool, arresting blues are worlds away from the comforting meadow green of her daughter’s eyes.

  
The second thing he thinks is he wishes he could build a moat around himself, just a temporary one so he could rest for a bit in a place where Evernever’s indecipherable motives couldn’t reach him, so he could have more energy to make a good first impression with Betty’s parents.

The third think that passes through his mind when Betty’s mother steps forward to acknowledge him is _thank fucking god_. He would much rather deal with this unknown devil right now than the one standing off to his side looking like a shark circling chummed waters.

“The boy on the other side of the camera,” the blonde woman concludes. How she knows that from a onceover is beyond Jughead.

“Mom.” Betty darts up behind her, and he feels instant relief just seeing her. Even though she doesn’t look pleased to see him, he feels safer with her there.

Over her mother’s shoulder, she tries to communicate something telepathically to Jughead, and maybe if he had complete control of all mental faculties, he could decipher it. As it stands, the best Jughead can manage is to offer her mother his hand. He figures that is a safe bet. “Hi, Jughead Jones. I write with Betty on the paper.”

The follow-up look of dread on Betty’s face makes him reconsider this tactic, but Betty picks up the slack, skipping around her mother to fill in some blanks. “Mom, this is F. Pendleton Jones. He wrote that short story for _The New Yorker_ , remember?”

Her mother’s dissecting gaze drops to Jughead’s shoes, rising slowly, and it feels like years pass while she catalogues every misplaced crease in his uniform trousers, every scuff on his leather belt, each wrinkle in his button-up, until she lands on the ratty wool beanie pulled down over his ears, hiding their red tips.

By the time she accepts his hand for one curt shake, Jughead thinks he should start packing what little he has left in the _Blue and Gold_ office, but then her mother smiles politely but coolly, something he is starting to recognize as wholly Cooper through and through. “I’m Alice Cooper, Betty’s mother, as you might’ve already guessed. You’re,” she pauses here, giving him another quick rundown with her chilled blue eyes. “You’re not what I expected.”

Jughead smiles, shrugging self-consciously. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

A middle-aged blond man exits the office with Headmaster Weatherbee, their heads bowed together as they speak in low tones to one another. Alice glances over her shoulder with a brusque snap of her husband’s name. _Hal_ jerks up, apologizes softly to the headmaster, and comes to his wife’s call. Jughead can see now he was right. Betty’s eyes are from her father, greener and certainly kinder than her mother’s, and he doesn’t hesitate to offer his own hand to Jughead. “Hal Cooper. Nice to meet you.”

Alice touches her husband’s shoulder. “Hal, this is.” She tops, her brow wrinkling to remember what to call him. “I’m sorry, you introduced yourself as Jughead, but what does the F stand for then?”

“Forsythe,” Jug supplies, smiling tightly, feeling the lingering sharpness of that final syllable on the edge of his tongue. “It’s a family name. There’s three of us, if you can believe it. Jughead is a nickname.” _Stop rambling_ , _ass, or she’ll know you hate it._

“Will you respond to Forsythe?” Alice inquires, and it feels like a test.

“Not quickly,” Jughead lies, thinking privately, _not comfortably_.

Alice purses her lips, test failed, but Hal steps in and invites Jughead to have dinner with them. “We always go to this diner when we make the trip up here. Best burgers in the state, I swear.”

Betty shakes her head almost imperceptibly over her father’s shoulder, wide-eyed glances between her mother and Jughead, and he wonders what has her so edgy.

“I’d love to,” he agrees, another forced smile, ignoring Betty’s gaze rising heavenward.

“Sweetheart,” Alice beckons to her daughter. “Think you could rustle up Charles and Chic?”

Betty looks like she swallowed a bug, but she answers her mother with all the enthusiasm of his old mutt Hot Dog knowing he is due for a vet visit. “Um, Charles said he would be cramming in the library with Chic. I think they have a big midterm tomorrow.”

Her mother sighs. “Right. And they cannot be bothered to sit down for one meal after we came all the way up here.”

“Mom, I can ask,” Betty offers, but Alice waves her off with another put-out sigh.

“No, don’t bother them. School comes first. What about you, Betty?”

“My first midterm is next Monday.” Jughead thinks she is talking about chemistry, and he pens it into his mental to-do list. Alice gives him a questioning look, and he supplies quickly _same_.

Hal slings his arm along Betty’s shoulders, directing them all towards the exit. “Shakes it is then!”

Alice rolls her eyes, shifting her purse higher on her shoulder as she click-clacks after them. She pauses and looks back at Jughead still standing by the trophy case. “Well, Mr. Jones, are you coming or not? I’m not fond of asking twice.”

Jughead trots to catch up. Alice Cooper doesn’t seem like a woman with too much patience, less a woman with much tolerance for the indecisive. Then, he suddenly remembers something, glancing back at the trophy case, but Evernever is nowhere to be seen. Following Betty’s mother to the parking lot, Jughead should feel like he dodged a bullet, but something tells him he only postponed the trigger pull.

* * *

Betty seems extra fidgety when the four of them settle into the booth. Alice and Hal take seats on one side with Betty and Jughead on the other. Jug can feel the seat cushion moving from Betty’s anxious jittering, her knee jumping up and down, and that jumpiness only gets worse when her strawberry milkshake arrives.

Alice shifts uncomfortably under her husband’s arm slung across the top of the booth, eyeing his hand draped across her shoulder. Hal ignores her pointed looks, drumming the table top with his other hand to Barbara Lewis coming in over the jukebox. Jughead tries not to study the dynamic too obviously. Alice doesn’t give him many chances, taking a prim sip of her coffee and regarding him just as closely over the lip of her mug, almost unabashedly as Jug scans the small boxcar diner.

It reminds him a little of Pop’s back in Riverdale, which definitely has the best burgers in the state. Jug refrained from correcting Hal on that point. Anticipating Betty’s dismay, Jug didn’t indulge his congenital urge to debate, even if it was to defend the ranking of one of his favorite spots back in his adopted hometown.

He recognizes some Canterbury uniforms on the other end of the service counter, but he couldn’t name the bodies in them if asked. Glancing back at Alice, her calculating gaze still dissecting him, he really hopes she doesn’t ask. Lest she think he might know them or if she gets a hankering to quiz him, he refuses to look anywhere else but within the confines of their booth.

Jughead forgoes the straw and takes a pull directly from the glass of his chocolate malt, and then sits back in the booth seat, keeping his hands on the tabletop at all times. He’s waiting for Alice to break the silence. He thinks everyone at the table is tacitly waiting for her to make the first move, and she acts like it is her God given right.

“So, Jughead,” Alice opens finally, startling him, which is surprising given he was waiting for just that. He even sits up a little straighter when her mug lands in the center circle of her saucer with a commanding clink. It is the first time she acknowledges him by his chosen name, and Jug can sense the moniker does not roll off her tongue with ease. “Are you a junior, too?”

“Yeah, yep.” He clears his throat. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You share classes with Betty?”

“A few.” She gives him a prompting look, implying that answer isn’t a stone’s throw from acceptable. “Civics, chemistry, and English. We have independent study together, too, for the paper,” he supplies quickly, thinks back for a moment to see if he missed one, glancing at Betty. She doesn’t move to correct him, and it lets him relax a bit.

“You must spend quite a bit of time together then,” Alice concludes, taking another slow sip of her coffee to let the implications sink in.

They don’t. Not at first. “A fair bit, I guess,” Jughead offers, but thinks to himself, _not really_. They share classes, but it doesn’t mean they share words or even spare glances in most of those classes.

He prays Alice won’t dive any deeper, but he can tell by the spark of interest in her eye that the interrogation has only just begun. Jug knows how bad it is going to look, hears the flint sparking over his backburner shame, and prepares himself for Hal’s pity and Alice’s accompanying revulsion when it becomes clear that Jughead is an untouchable at Canterbury.

He side-eyes Betty who has yet to engage in the conversation, her chin balanced on her opposite shoulder away from him. Is that why she seems painfully uncomfortable with this entire scenario? She keeps looking at her milkshake like it is filled with thumb tacks.

The group of Canterbury students erupts into riotous laughter behind them, and Jughead down a third of his milkshake in response. Is that what’s got her so jumpy? She is afraid someone will spot him with her and her parents. How would their peers interpret this peculiar scene? Jughead cannot imagine the blowback they could expect at school, more for Betty than himself if Cheryl caught wind of it.

Then, it hits him, Alice’s insinuating tone. He is having dinner with Betty Cooper’s parents, the same Betty Cooper sitting next to him looking read to crawl out of her skin. Can her mother sense that? Chancing a peek across the table, she most definitely can. _Crap_. This is the same Betty Cooper who gave him a hand-job during independent study only a handful of hours ago. _Shit_. He wasn’t prepared for this either.

Her manicured nails clipping the porcelain mug at a contemplative pace, Alice stares at him while Hal belts out their customary orders, prompting Jughead for his own. The menu looks like Greek to him now, but he could down half of it without caring what they put in front of him. He settles on an oldie but goldie, though, a double cheeseburger and onion rings. 

Once the waiter leaves to drop their ticket off at the kitchen, Alice promptly resumes her interrogation, “When Betty said she had some new help on the paper, I’m assuming that was you.”

He glances at Betty for confirmation, but she is too busy tracing shapes on her milkshake glass. She hasn’t taken a drink yet. He is pretty sure Alice is referring to him, and for a moment, he feels kind of honored Betty would bring him up at all with her parents, even if she didn’t identify him by name, especially when Alice confides that she didn’t think she had ever heard her daughter get so excited about the _Blue and Gold_ before, adding, “Now that I know it was you, I’m hopeful.”

Jughead swallows. “Hopeful?”

Hal interjects here, puffed up with pride, “I wrote for the _Blue and Gold_ when I was a saint.”

“And we hoped Betty would make the paper something worth reading again,” Alice tacks on. Jughead notes she drinks her coffee black, staring at the steaming dark enigma in her cup. “She has it in her.”

Jughead agrees wholeheartedly, but before he can communicate all the ways he knows Betty is going to bring the _Blue and Gold_ back to life, Alice quickly snuffs out any response, tossing sand on the eternal flames of admiration he keeps burning for Betty Cooper. “She just hasn’t been great at recruitment, which doesn't make any sense to us, given how popular she is. Too much cheerleading and not enough writing, sweetheart.”

“Right,” Jughead agrees flatly. “Recruitment.”

“So, how did she rope you into it?”

He quickly sets the record straight. “Oh, no I joined.”

Alice smiles here, and Jug has difficulty interpreting whether she is pleased with his initiative or glad she was correct about her daughter’s faults, which weren’t really faults, in Jug’s opinion. Enlisting willing students to write for the school paper was like herding cats, and he wants to assert that point, defend Betty, but Alice is already racing on to her next issue too fast for any rebuttals. He wonders if that is a debate tactic. If she keeps moving, he’ll never land a hit. She looks like she cheats at _Battleship_ , too.

“So, you were the mastermind behind this whole stunt then?”

Jughead sits back, dropping his hands in his lap without thinking. Where the hell did Alice get that idea? Betty’s discomfort coupled with his inability to go on the defensive has him regretting not ordering at least an appetizer to buffer the shame boiling in his stomach. He needs something to occupy his mouth and give him a little extra time to come up with appropriate answers for Alice’s hardball Q and A.

He swallows again with more effort, wishing Betty would jump in here, bogart the wheel because he feels the road getting slippery, like he is about to wrap them around a telephone pole. This is her mother, her territory, and he imagines she has more efficient tackle in her box to handle this unwieldy catch. Glancing Betty’s way one more time, trying to get a bead on where her head is at, Jughead suddenly considers that maybe she can’t. The fact Alice is asking about who started what is telling enough, that her own mother doesn’t think Betty had the agency to jumpstart this coup herself. 

It occurs to him that perhaps Alice Cooper doesn’t know her daughter very well at all, and worse, doesn’t give Betty the chance to show her.

“I was merely the help, Mrs. Cooper,” Jughead informs her, trying for cavalier. He deflects her mother’s attention by sliding his milkshake glass forward to take another sip while his free hand stills Betty’s jittering knee. He feels the joint seize up, her hand latching onto his wrist in alarm, but as his thumb smooths circles into the taper of her thigh, the tension begins to melt with his persistent ministrations. When he discloses to her mother that it was Betty’s idea to corner Chuck for the confession and film it, Betty finally leans forward to take a healthy pull off the candy red straw of her strawberry milkshake. 

One prim eyebrow rises in curiosity, maybe even a hint of respect for his honesty or that Betty isn’t some hothouse flower, despite her appearance. He hears the thoughtful scrape of her shell pink nails across the porcelain of her mug, but she keeps her eyes on him. She smiles like she expected this answer, and Jughead can see now where Betty gets it, that weighing stare, those probing questions that intentionally miss the mark to ferret out the truth.

Alice blows on her coffee and takes another sip, a sip of victory, Jug thinks. “Betty can be resourceful when she puts her mind to it, but you don’t think it was a little heavy-handed?”

“For something like this? No, not at all,” Jug answers without hesitation. Something like this, something that had probably been happening for years, would not go unnoticed by the school administration. Based on his conversations with Edgar alone, Jug is willing to bet it was willful ignorance considering the power of the families involved, Nick St. Claire in particular. He knows money holds sway over almost all things, especially in this place, this other world where people and their influence are defined by it. His mother used to say it was all that mattered. Power meant nothing without it. _Money makes might, and might makes right, Forsythe_.

He doesn’t know how to communicate this to Betty’s mother without offending her, so he lets it end there. Alice seems like an intuitive woman. By the glow of appreciation in her eyes, he doesn’t think he has made a misstep yet during this interrogation, and he’s not about to start putting his foot in his mouth by ranting about blue-blooded hypocrisies.

“Betty has it in her mind to publish an expose on this whole cover-up,” Alice continues. Jughead resists a smile, _yeah, she gets it_. “That asinine headmaster of yours, talk about an ostrich with his head in the sand, doesn’t think that would be appropriate material for a student newspaper. What are your thoughts on that, Jughead?”

_Fuck him_. “I think that’s censorship of the press. It’s not libel. We have him on tape confessing, for Christ’s sake.” _Whoops_. Jughead has been careful so far not to take the Lord’s name in vain while at Canterbury, though he slips up when Betty’s around. She has a habit of making him feel grateful to the powers that be, in more ways than one.

Alice doesn’t seem to notice, but Hal shifts in his seat and clears his throat. Like Betty, he hasn’t inserted himself into the conversation either, and Jughead wonders if that is a running theme with the Coopers. Alice is the self-proclaimed headliner in their marriage, and Jughead is willing to bet Charles might be the frontrunner amongst his siblings.

“Weatherbee had the gall to accuse Betty of making a threat on Chuck’s life to get that confession. Chuck’s parents are threatening to sue if we try to write an article about this. They have no idea who they’re dealing with. You know how many libel suits I’ve lost?” Alice asks, pressing her index finger into the tabletop to prove her point.

“Zero?” Jughead guesses. Betty feels more relaxed at his side. He wants to believe he can bring her some modicum of relief from her mother’s erratic disapproval. She has drunk more of her milkshake. When she nudges him for a taste of his, he slides it over on the backs of his knuckles, smiling while he keeps his attention on her mother. His hand hasn’t left Betty’s thigh, and her hand hasn’t left his wrist.

If Alice has noticed, she hasn’t made it known yet, seeming too invested in her rant to make a note of the absence of Jug’s hand on the tabletop, the mirrored absence of her daughter’s. Hal appears equally as oblivious, and then Jughead considers the possibility that neither of her parent’s care. More optimistically, they might even approve of Jughead. Or they don’t think Jughead has a chance in hell with their daughter, so it never occurs to them to check. He is willing to put money on the latter.

Alice’s index finger rises from the greasy linoleum to mark Jughead where he sits. “That’s exactly right, Jughead. Zero.”

She rolls her eyes and takes a sip from her coffee, realizes it has gone too lukewarm for her taste, and snaps at the passing waitress for a warm-up. As the waitress refills her mug, Alice continues, “They’re saying he was drugged. Well, I didn’t see anything like that on the tape, and there’s no tox screen in my hand, so good luck having that hold up in court.”

Jughead knows that is not entirely true. While the video doesn’t show either Betty or Jughead drugging Chuck, it was implied he was given him something to loosen his tongue. He wonders if that would hold up in court and resolves himself to look it up later. Something tells him that it won’t get that far, though. Alice seems intent on sewing Nick and Chuck into their body bags before a bailiff ever gets the chance to say _all rise_.

“The Lodges, of course, were less than helpful. We’ll be showing that video to our lawyers, and it should help build the case. I will say the camera work was a little shaky,” she tosses across the table with an arched eyebrow. Jughead thought he did a pretty good job at keeping the camcorder steady, but based on Betty’s and Hal’s deference towards her, he guesses living up to Alice Cooper’s expectations is a Sisyphean effort.

“These people,” she sighs, shaking her head, giving the waitress a dismissive _thank you_ and a sweep of her hand to vamoose. “That schmuck St. Claire, he had the audacity to say this was just Betty’s insane revenge fantasy for something that never happened. Brought Polly into it.”

Jughead perks up at the mention of Betty’s older sister. “What about Polly?”

He has been too afraid to broach the subject with Betty, and it is still a sore one based on Archie’s refusal to go into any sort of detail about it. However, knowing what he does now about the tombs beneath the church, the very real possibility there is a secret cult at Canterbury, and how some of this parallels the delusions Polly Cooper espoused during her nervous breakdown last year, Jug realizes he needs her insight. Even secondhand insight from Betty or her mother would be better than nothing.

“You know how you know when someone is backed into a corner, Jughead,” Alice muses rhetorically. She seems more comfortable saying his name now. He wonders if someone spiked her coffee while he wasn’t looking. She has a big purse. _Christ, don’t be mean, Jones. You should be so lucky she seems to be warming up to you_ , he chastises himself, stroking the notch of Betty’s knee. 

“They resort to the insanity plea,” Alice exclaims. “Polly might’ve cracked, but.”

Hal interrupts, surprising nearly the entire table. “But, our Betty has more grit than that, don’t you, sweetheart?”

Jughead feels at a loss for words, and though he doesn’t know it, both he and Betty offer tight-lipped, uneasy smiles across the table. He almost cannot fathom it, that both Betty’s parents were in complete agreement that Polly’s mental faculties were not up to snuff and disclose that assessment so flippantly.

Betty’s grip on his wrist tightens, but Jughead’s thumb rubbing circles into her thigh remains steady and reassuring. He cannot help himself, though. He needs to know more before the conversation runs off course, and then he never has another chance to bring it up without seeming like a complete ass. He feels like one just for prolonging it. “Did Polly know Chuck or Nick?”

He feels Betty’s eyes on his face, alarmed by this question.

Alice dismisses this with another imperious wave of her hand. “Not that I know of. Betty?”

“No,” Betty supplies firmly, her gaze burning a hole in Jughead’s cheek.

“Polly was dating Jason Blossom, right, before he, um, passed,” Jughead continues despite Betty’s hand moving up his wrist, putting a stop to his reassuring circles. It is a misstep, he knows this, but he might not get another opportunity to ask these questions. He is willing to do damage control later. “Jason was the captain of the football team before Chuck, right? I was just curious if they ever crossed paths.”

Alice smiles like the cat that ate the canary, glancing at Hal like she just won a bet. “You’re a cold-blooded journalist, aren’t you?” Her mother looks at him like she wants to open him up and find out how he ticks. Or give him an internship.

“What are you getting at, Jughead?” What she really means is, _don’t play mind games with me, kiddo. Know who you’re dealing with._

He decides to take a different tack. “Was Polly very active with the church?” Betty’s grip is nearly punishing now.

Alice exhales in exasperation like the subject bores her, letting Hal insert himself. Jughead concludes the church is Hal’s area of expertise, and Alice is merely along for the ride to religion. Finally, a dynamic Jughead can empathize with. “Yes, Polly was. Still is. She sung for the choir, too, didn’t she, Betty? Voice of an angel. I was disappointed when she quit.”

Finally, something, and he ignores Alice’s pointed gaze. She must recognize the eager look on his face, the dog that found the bone. Clearly Alice carries their newspaper empire, though Jughead knows it belongs to Hal’s family. “Quit? When did that happen?”

Hal sighs. “You know it was around the time Jason passed, a little before that. The last time we came up to visit the kids, she told us in this very booth.”

“Did she say why?”

Alice splices herself back into the conversation, as if she has no faith in Hal’s ability to tell a story. “Polly was barely making any sense at the time, Hal.” She turns to Jughead. “We knew something was up. We got calls from the school, the choir directory saying he was worried about her and Jason, that both of them refused to attend mass. There were calls from the headmaster about the two of them skipping class as well. Polly was acting like the church was the gateway to hell. Things were an absolute mess near the end there.”

“Mom,” Betty interjects gently.

Alice shifts her gaze like a blade to her youngest, her tongue the tip of the knife. “We hoped our other children would keep her out of trouble, but I guess that was a tall order, wasn’t it, Elizabeth?”

Betty drops her eyes into her lap. Her grip on Jughead’s wrist goes slack. _Shit_.

Her ego preening with Betty’s submission, Alice continues, “All the signs were there, but Charles, he had so many things going on with student council and the SATs. The only one that bothered to warn us was Chic, bless his heart.”

“Were Chic and Polly close?” He tries to deflect the conversation away from Betty. His thumb resumes its ministrations, and he considers ending the line of inquiry completely. Her chin is back on her shoulder.

“Close enough,” Hal says, squeezing back in. “Charles and Betty, they’re the studious ones, always so focused on their academics, but Chic and Polly, dreamers, their heads in the clouds. You should have seen these four as kids, Jughead. Betty always had her nose in a book.” Jughead can believe that. English seems to be her favorite class, and he has caught on to the fact she reads seven books at once, one for every day of the week. He wants to kiss her just thinking about it. “Charles, he was the kind of kid that starts a debate team in fourth grade. But, Chic and Polly, always playing make-believe with one another. They were always playing this one game when they were little. What was it called, honey?” He turns to Alice, but she rolls her eyes, has no clue.

“Griffins and Gargoyles,” Betty provides, her tone subdued, tired. 

_What the hell is with this game_? Jughead remembers the quest card in his blazer pocket. _Just a game, my sweet dick_. “How is Polly now? I hope she’s doing better.”

Hal smiles good-naturedly, appreciating the thoughtfulness. “She’s getting there. She’s singing again.”

“With a bunch of nuns,” Alice says under her breath, then louder, throwing a pointed look at their waitress loitering by the service counter, “Where is our food?”

Betty fiddles with her straw. While Hal and Alice are trying to get the waitress’s attention, Jughead tilts his head towards Betty, whispering in her ear, “I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t look at him, but whispers back, “We’ll talk about it later.”

He gives her a barely perceptible nod, but her hand is back on his, fingers playing through his own. It is a good sign that he didn’t go too far.

The waitress pops up like a prairie dog out of its hole, recalling she has customers waiting. Jughead spots their meals drying out under the heat lamps in the window, and Alice looks about ready to have a coronary over it.

The rest of his dinner with Betty’s parents passes without further incident, except when Alice snaps at Jughead that it is rude to wear a hat at the dinner table.

Sheepishly, he slides the beanie off his head, carding his fingers through his hair, matted to his head from being shoved underneath his crown. Betty smiles into her milkshake, and Jughead feels like Clark Kent without his glasses on, except there is nothing Superman-like about the joker underneath. The exposure speeds up his appetite, though, scarfing down the load of onion rings on his tray. He eats more when he feels vulnerable, yet he realizes offhand that the only people he seems to be okay with seeing him without his crown are Archie and Betty. He wonders how telling that is for him on some subconscious level.

Betty picks at her grilled cheese but finishes all of her tomato bisque. Jughead polishes off his burger in about three minutes flat and then eyes her sandwich, the cheese gelling, and she slides her plate towards him. He knows Alice makes a note of all of it, staring at Jughead’s plate that might as well be licked clean save for the shriveled bit of garnish. He keeps waiting for the pointed comment at the end of her knowing looks, but it never comes. She certainly knows how to keep him guessing, and he muses that she and Betty have that in common.

Hal makes a flat joke about the metabolism of teenage boys, and Jughead wonders how their marriage works, whether Alice finds Hal’s boy-next-door all-grown-up routine endearing or if he is just a placeholder. At some point Jughead notices her parents are holding hands underneath the table and takes it all back. He really has to remind himself not to make snap judgments based on minimal information. Those are not the makings of a good journalist, let alone a good writer, he tells himself.

By the end of dinner, Jughead offers to pay the tip, even though he barely has a Jackson to his name. As soon as the overture leaves his mouth, he realizes that emergency twenty is in his dorm room, but thankfully Hal waves him off, stuffing a wad of bills under his empty milkshake glass. Despite the service, he tips generously, and Jughead can see Alice debate with herself about whether to relieve the waitress of a few of those bills.

* * *

Except for the tinny sound of NPR over the radio, the car ride back to campus is mostly quiet.

Betty and her mother stare out their respective windows, and Jughead contemplates the similarities in their profiles, the same pensive curl of their lips, the wistful gaze. For every way Betty is not like her mother, there is one uncanny resemblance, and it makes Jughead wonder whether his mother’s mannerisms make an appearance on his own face unbidden, if he could pinpoint which ones simmer to the surface and when it happens. More, he wonders whether he could ever hope to eradicate them. Or if there are just some parts he cannot excise from his inherent self, if it was just one of those things he had to accept would always be a part of him.

Hal drops them off in front of the dormitories. Before Jughead can spill out of the backseat, Hal shakes his hand with all the perfunctory partings. Alice orders Betty to keep her abreast of any new developments with Weatherbee and that she will be in touch about the Chuck and Nick situation.

“We will be filing a restraining order with our lawyers tomorrow morning, so keep your wits about you, sweetheart,” Alice explains. “I know we talked about you coming home until this gets squared away. That option is still available.”

“Mom, I’ll be fine. I have Charles and Chic and Archie. And, Jughead,” she contends, opening the car door and stepping out. 

Jug feels a dash of pride drop into the pot of his backburner shame. To be mentioned at all, to her mother no less, it is a step forward, a step towards the closet door. Alice gives Jughead another underwhelmed onceover. Compared to Charles and Archie, Jughead can agree he would be a lucky David to Chuck’s Goliath, but he is pretty certain he could hold his own against Nick if needs must.

“I have plenty of bodyguards, okay. Besides, Chuck’s not even on campus anymore,” Betty reasons. Jughead wonders if that is entirely true, if Chuck was successfully barred from Canterbury. That would make his next steps with the quest much easier.

“Have you told your brother yet, Elizabeth?”

Betty shrugs her shoulders noncommittally, and Alice looks like she is ramping up for another scolding when the conversation should be winding down. But, Jughead is curious why Betty hasn’t told Charles about the Chuck and Nick debacle yet. Better, he wonders how Charles would react and that perhaps it is a good thing Chuck isn’t on campus at the moment. Nick on the other hand.

“How can you keep your own brother in the dark about this? You don’t tell him, I will. He shouldn’t have to find out with an article in the school paper, Elizabeth, and if I find out that.”

“Mom,” she bursts out. “I’ll tell him, okay. I just – let me be the one. I promise I’m not going to drop the bomb on him in some article. Give me some credit, jeez.” Alice shoots a probing look through backseat, searching for the lie.

“Okay, mom, I’m going now,” Betty declares, moving to shut the car door.

Alice rolls down her window, and only Jughead sees Betty squeeze her eyes shut in frustration before she turns to her mother with a placid, accepting smile. “Tell Charles and Chic we send our love, sweetie. And Elizabeth,” she beckons. Betty steps forward, placing her hand on the card door to steady herself with a _yes, mother_? “You’ll send me a copy of your article, won’t you?”

Jughead grins to himself. Betty’s cheeks flush with pride when she promises her mother she will overnight it.

“I always knew you had it in you, Betty,” her mother commends, patting her hand. “You take care, keep us informed, and stay vigilant.”

She looks past her daughter at Jughead huddled behind her in the cold. Jug didn’t have time to grab his jacket before they left, and fall is quickly giving way to winter. “You. You keep an eye on her, or it’s your head.”

“You don’t want to read my article, too, Mrs. Cooper,” he throws back cheekily, faux offended, trying for levity.

Alice sucks her teeth at him, and Betty takes that as her cue to let go of the car door. Then, Alice leaves him with a comparatively worse rebuttal that, joking aside, Jughead nearly regrets opening his mouth at all. “Of course, Mr. Jones. It will help me figure out if you were the one who actually wrote that short story for _The New Yorker_.”

She rolls up the window and points at the windshield for Hal to head home. Now, there is woman who can get where she needs to go on her index finger alone.

Betty folds her arms across her middle. She forgot a jacket as well. She gives Jughead a look that says, _you asked for it_.

Jughead, dumbstruck for a moment, watches the taillights disappear down the driveway and back towards the main campus before turning to Betty, incredulous. “She thinks I plagiarized it?”

Betty tilts her head towards him with a crafty smile. “To be honest, she likes you.” Jughead feels his ego puff up a little. “More than she likes Archie, that’s for sure.” Okay, now she needs to stop before he grabs her and pushes her up against the wall of their dormitory.

“You sound surprised?”

She shrugs. “I’m surprised when my mother shows positive interest in any of my friends. She’s not known for it.”

Jughead will take that as a win, but he concedes, “It’s probably just the short story. If I didn’t have that going for me.”

Betty rejects that line of thinking immediately. “You also write for the school paper, and as a scholarship student, you probably aren’t a complete idiot.” He gasps in mock offense, and she rolls her eyes. “You’re completing all her pre-requisites, at least on paper, if not the.” She stops, and he gets where she is going. He doesn’t look the part, for sure, with his ratty woolen beanie and surly attitude, but maybe Alice saw those as fixable attributes, that he was a diamond in the rough.

He reminds himself to dig up more background on Alice Cooper later. It didn’t occur to him to try until he recognized he might have a chance at her approval.

Betty changes the subject, though. “What was that about, by the way?”

Jughead pops out of his thoughts on impressing Betty’s parents. “What?”

“The stuff about the church and Polly,” Betty prompts. “I thought you’d dropped that part of the story.”

“I did,” he half-truths. “I’m just doing my due diligence, Cooper.”

“Why didn’t you ask me then?”

He rocks back and forth on his heels. It might be too cold for this conversation, but she looks at him like she wants him to be uncomfortable, crossing her arms tighter around her middle. This was what she meant by later. “I don’t know,” he muddles. “You don’t seem to like talking about Polly. Which I get.”

She finishes his thought easily. “And my parents brought it up first, so you saw an in,” she concludes. Sometimes she is too intuitive for her own good, he muses, glancing at the brick wall behind him and seriously reconsidering taking their conversation over there where he can keep her warm.

But, he has enough shame to cringe. “Is that bad?”

She sighs. “No, not really. It _is_ manipulative.”

Which she definitely doesn’t appreciate, and it makes him feel rotten all of a sudden. That is something her peers do. It is not something Jughead Jones does, at least not to her. He knew that going in, but damn it, he was like a dog on the scent. He could not pass up the opportunity to dig, and it makes him feel worse that he did that at Betty’s expense.

“It is,” he concedes with contrition. “I won’t do it again. I’ll ask you directly.”

Betty chews her lip. She doesn’t appear irreparably angry, but he can sense the disappointment. The pot starts boiling on the backburner, and he wants to go back to rubbing soothing circles into her knee, her shoulder, any part of her she will allow him the privilege of touching if only to feel the tension melt away.

“You don’t have to tiptoe around my feelings, Jughead. In fact, I’d prefer it if you didn’t. Archie does that. Charlies does it. And it’s annoying. I’m not made of glass.”

“I know that,” he says quickly because he does. He thinks he knows that better than anyone. Well, maybe not Chuck. Chuck definitely got a good look at the centerfold shot of the unbreakable Betty Cooper.

“Okay,” he agrees, waiting a beat, rocking on his heels again before he inquires shyly, “So, can I ask you about Polly?”

She levels her gaze with him. “Is this for a story?” He doesn’t know exactly what she means, something for the _Blue and Gold_ or something else. “A fictional story, Jughead,” she clarifies. “Another short story.”

“I don’t know yet,” he admits. “Depends on how much truth there is to it.”

She nods like she can wrap her head around that, like she genuinely understands the method to Jughead’s madness. _Jesus, where the hell did you come from?_ He thinks offhand. It is like she knows exactly how to tune into his wavelength at any given moment, and it both amazes and spooks him.

“If I tell you about Polly, can you promise me one thing?”

Without hesitation, “Of course, Betty.”

“You won’t include her in your story. I know my parents made it seem like she was crazy from the start, but.” She pauses, her anger flaring just remembering how her parent’s wrote Polly off during dinner. Jughead’s guilt floods back in with it because he was definitely the problem child during that conversation, perpetuating that line of inquiry.

“There’s more to that story, okay. Polly isn’t crazy. Losing Jason was hard on her, and my sister is.” She huffs, trying to find the right word, settling on, “Delicate. So, if I’m going to talk about her, I want you to promise not to put her in your story, whether it be for the _Blue and Gold_ or _The New Yorker_. And,” she pauses, pointing her finger at him and looking so much like her mother that it makes him want to snort in amusement. “You will let me read it before you even think about publishing it. To make sure you kept your word.”

He steps forward and grabs her hand, folding the accusatory finger into her palm, tugging her towards him. She lets him but looks up at him expecting his pledge before she makes any further determinations. He barely catches it, but there is a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes, that she doesn’t quite trust him not to deceive her.

“Betty, I promise not to exploit your sister’s story for personal gain,” he swears with as much sincerity as he can manage. The thought alone makes him angry, that someone would try. If Polly ended up being an integral part of this story, he had always planned on asking Betty for permission to use that information before he submitted whatever came out of this investigation.

She visibly softens when he curls his hands around her shoulders, leaning her cheek onto his knuckles and admitting in a low tone, “I know all the best writers draw from their experiences or the experiences of others. I get that. I just – I don’t want my sister painted that way.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Betty,” he assures her. “Trust me, I get it.” And he loves that she gets it, too. _Whoa_. That word came out of nowhere.

She takes a deep breath and lets it go slowly, relieved that they have gotten this conversation out of the way. He’s still working on that four-letter lump in his throat while she skips on over to the next topic.

“Well, I’m not sleeping anytime soon,” she confesses, dropping her head back to look up at the second floor windows in the dormitory, most darkened, a few late night crammers.

“My mind is moving a mile a minute, and I know I’m just going to spend all night thinking about it, so you go get some sleep,” she urges, reaching up and stroking the sleepless bruises under his eyes. His chest feels two sizes too small in that moment. “I’m going to the _Blue and Gold_ to finish that article.”

“Betty, it’s almost curfew,” he reminds her like it should be obvious.

She sends that shrewd smile up at him again, waiting for him to reach the conclusion on his own. When he doesn’t, she raises her eyebrows at him. “You remember I can pick locks, right?”

Jughead closes his eyes feeling like he should have seen that one coming. She is turning into his favorite person in all things.

“Right,” he grants, nodding slowly, and then he tugs her forward, wrapping his arms around her, feeling her own unfold and envelope his middle. She always feels so good to hold. He needs to slow down, but he can’t. He’s got a sixteen-ton question mark weighing down his blazer pocket, and all he wants to do is hold her until the sun comes back. “So, is this a solitary activity or is there room for a minion or two?”

Fighting a smile, she admits that a little help wouldn’t hurt. He pecks her on the tip of her nose, red from the cold. “Count me in.” 


End file.
